The ARKs-in-the-Open (AITO) team made great strides in 2018 toward their goal to transition the ARK specification and registry from the California Digital Library to a community supported and managed activity.

Some highlights of the work so far this year:

• The project received expressions of interest from 27 organizations on 4 continents.
• The project team developed a project vision, resources and value statement, and roadmap.
• The AITO Advisory Group formed and meets monthly to move the project forward according to the roadmap.
• Work has begun to form working groups to focus on project sustainability, outreach, and technical development. This builds on results from the The ARK Identifier Summit and Experts Day at the National Library of France, March 21-22, 2018.
  • Summit programme and videos recordings (in French)
  • Experts Day minutes (in English) [PDF]
• Project presentations at several international meetings: iPres, the Decentralized Web Summit, and Singapore PID Workshop.

For 2019, the team’s priorities include:

• Finalizing initial charters for each working group
• Appointing members to all three working groups
• Developing a financial and governance model

If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in this project, please sign up for the ARK mailing list or visit ARKsInTheOpen.org.

The

At this inaugural meeting, the AG reviewed and affirmed the project vision, resources and values, and proposed timetable. Members also approved a plan to set up three working groups:

• Outreach
• Technical
• Fundraising

With summer holidays in full swing, populating the working groups is not scheduled to start until late September.

We’re also happy to report that in the 5 months since ARKs-in-the-Open was announced, 38 new organizations have registered to use ARKs. As a reminder, the AG members are:

• Sayeed Choudhury (Johns Hopkins University)
• Kurt Ewoldsen and John Kunze (California Digital Library)
• John Howard (University College Dublin)
• Frédérique Joannic-Seta (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
• Martin Kalfatovic (Smithsonian Institution Libraries)
• Brian McBride (University of Utah)
• Mark Phillips (University of North Texas Libraries)
• Andrew Treloar (Australian National Data Service)
• Kate Wittenberg (Portico)

If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in the ARKs-in-the-Open project, please sign up for the ARK mailing list (in English, or the French ARK mailing list), and if you’d like to become involved in the project, please fill out the Expression of Interest form. To register to use ARKs, please fill out the institutional registration form.

Planning is underway for an initial meeting of the group to review the goals, proposed roadmap, and timetable, as well as to launch working groups dedicated to pursuing objectives related to outreach, technical best practices, and fundraising. Stay tuned for opportunities to get involved.

Introducing the founding members of the ARKs-in-the-Open Advisory Group:

• Sayeed Choudhury (Johns Hopkins University)
• Kurt Ewoldsen and John Kunze (California Digital Library)
• John Howard (University College Dublin)
• Frédérique Joannic-Seta (Bibliothèque nationale de France)
• Martin Kalfatovic (Smithsonian Institution Libraries)
• Brian McBride (University of Utah)
• Mark Phillips (University of North Texas Libraries)
• Andrew Treloar (Australian National Data Service)
• Kate Wittenberg (Portico)

Meanwhile, we continue to receive expressions of interest in the project. We are very proud to have attracted interest and support from the following 23 organizations on 4 continents:

• Australian National Data Service
• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg
• Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas – Argentina
• The British Library
• Family Search International
• Indiana University
• Institut Internationale de la Marionnette
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Portico
• Sempiternelia
• Service interministériel des Archives de France
• Smithsonian Institution
• Texas A&M University Libraries
• University College Dublin
• University of Arizona
• University of California, San Francisco
• University of Houston Libraries
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• University of Maryland
• University of North Texas
• University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute
• University of Utah

If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in this project, please sign up for the ARK mailing list, http://bit.ly/2o7aNew or visit our wiki.

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First big output of FORCE11 Data Citation Implementation Group – the harmonized compact identifier system. Paper published in Scientific Data (Uniform resolution of compact identifiers for biomedical data) which also announces its adoption of this system in accompanying editorial (https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201895).

Abstract:

Most biomedical data repositories issue locally-unique accessions numbers, but do not provide globally unique, machine-resolvable, persistent identifiers for their datasets, as required by publishers wishing to implement data citation in accordance with widely accepted principles. Local accessions may however be prefixed with a namespace identifier, providing global uniqueness. Such “compact identifiers” have been widely used in biomedical informatics to support global resource identification with local identifier assignment. We report here on our project to provide robust support for machine-resolvable, persistent compact identifiers in biomedical data citation, by harmonizing the Identifiers.org and N2T.net (Name-To-Thing) meta-resolvers and extending their capabilities. Identifiers.org services hosted at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory – European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), and N2T.net services hosted at the California Digital Library (CDL), can now resolve any given identifier from over 600 source databases to its original source on the Web, using a common registry of prefix-based redirection rules. We believe these services will be of significant help to publishers and others implementing persistent, machine-resolvable citation of research data.

Learn more in the Force11 press release — Introducing a New Standard for the Citation of Research Data

About FORCE11

FORCE11 is a non-profit organization and community of scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders that has arisen organically to help facilitate the change toward improved knowledge creation and sharing. Individually and collectively, we aim to bring about a change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology. We are a neutral information market, where stakeholders come to the table for an open discussion, on an even playing field, to talk about changing the ways scholarly and scientific information is communicated, shared and used. Learn more and join the FORCE11 community on our website (https://www.force11.org). You may also follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/force11rescomm) or connect on Slack (https://web.archive.org/web/20190703154404/https://force11slack.herokuapp.com/).

Back home, the ARKs in the Open team is now hard at work developing Advisory Team invitations which we expect to send out shortly. We are very proud to have attracted interest and support from the following organizations on four continents:

• Australian National Data Service
• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg
• Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas – Argentina
• The British Library
• Family Search International
• Indiana University
• Institut Internationale de la Marionnette
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Portico
• Sempiternelia
• Smithsonian Institution
• Texas A&M University Libraries
• University College Dublin
• University of Arizona
• University of California, San Francisco
• University of Houston Libraries
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• University of Maryland
• University of North Texas
• University of Utah

If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in this project, please sign up for the ARK mailing list, http://bit.ly/2o7aNew or visit our wiki.

Joan Starr, EZID Service Manager, in CDL’s Infrastructure and Applications Support group, will be retiring on June 28, 2018. While this is sad news for CDL and the UC community, it is the right time for Joan  (first grandchild on way) and we were lucky to have her for as long as we did.

Joan’s first experience with CDL was as an intern while she was still in library school in 2003. She fell in love with the CDL mission and within 18 months was offered a position as the Project Planning and Resource Allocation Service Manager. This role allowed her to work with many different teams on a variety of projects, including Mass Digitization, HathiTrust, a CDL website redesign, JHOVE2, and others. She led two University of California (UC) Library system-wide project management initiatives and was the project manager for two large-scale UC technical services improvement efforts.  During this period, she also served as CDL’s Internship Coordinator, improving the recruitment process and matching eager graduate students with CDL projects and programs.

In 2009, the DataCite organization emerged, with CDL as one of its founding members. Shortly thereafter, CDL formed a new team formed to build an identifier service, and Joan became the service/product manager (and chief evangelist), thereof. Through her efforts, and over the following years, EZID grew into an internationally recognizable brand with over 180 clients on 4 continents, including representatives from academia, government, the nonprofit, and commercial sectors. Joan became actively engaged in DataCite’s metadata working group as well as Force11, participating in the development of the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles, and follow-on work to promote implementation of the principles.

Last August, the EZID program began the transition of its DOI services to DataCite.  Since then Joan has been instrumental in supporting EZID clients through this transition, providing guides, webinars, and personal introductions and support. As one client wrote, “We really appreciate all the work you’ve done to get us to the point where DataCite transition is straightforward and easy!  You’ve been right there with us every step of the way!” CDL will soon provide a new contact for EZID-related activities going forward.

As you can see from the above, Joan has been a key member of the organization for many years. Her persistence and professionalism have been a hallmark of her tenure and will be missed by all. We wish Joan the very best with her next adventure.

Recent Enhancements, News, and Activities

• Identifier Systems Architect John Kunze was the keynote speaker at an ARK Summit hosted by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF), http://www.bnf.fr/fr/professionnels/anx_journees_pro_2018/a.jp_180321_ark.html. The event, conducted in French, drew participants from around Europe. The Library also sponsored an English-language pre-conference “Experts Day” meeting. The notes are available here: https://www.cdlib.org/services/infrastructure/docs/ARK_experts_day.pdf.
• The team has launched a major initiative in collaboration with DuraSpace. It is called ARKs in the Open. The ultimate goal is to build an open, international community around ARKs and their use as persistent identifiers in the scholarly ecosystem. You can read a more detailed project description here: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSP/ARKs+in+the+Open+Project. If you’d like to keep up to date on developments, please subscribe to the ARKs mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/arks-forum. If you like what you read and want to express interest, please fill out this form: http://bit.ly/2C4fU8f.
• EZID Service Manager Joan Starr continues to work with the many clients that need to choose a new DOI service provider. Note that this affects non-University of California entities only. If you have questions about your specific situation, please contact us.

EZID Partners and Clients

Our current EZID clients include academic institutions, government agencies, non-profit organizations and commercial entities.

EZID Service Description

EZID (easy-eye-dee) is a production service that gives researchers the ability to create and manage long-term identifiers so that they can to track usage, get credit for their work, share their data, and have the data reused for additional research. As a result, EZID identifiers also make it possible to increase citations, to build on previous work, to conduct new research, and avoid duplicating previous efforts.

EZID Service Manager

Joan Starr contact

EZID Training Materials, Guides, FAQs and Webinars

More information about EZID is available by contacting us. See also EZID outreach and webinars.

Service Monitoring and Availability

For information about EZID status, please consider the following options:

• API inquiries; see the API documentation here: http://ezid.cdlib.org/doc/apidoc.html#server-status
• The CDL System Status page here: http://www.cdlib.org/contact/system.html
• The EZID Status Blog: http://ezidstatus.wordpress.com/
• The EZID RSS Feed (from the blog): http://ezidstatus.wordpress.com/feed/

“The venue was packed all day with fantastic energy and diverse perspectives from publishing, research, archives, and libraries. The organizers and presenters were all outstanding and I was very honored to participate in this exciting event” said Kunze.BnF was an early adopter of ARKs and many French-speaking institutions followed their lead. For example, almost forty francophone organizations joined the ARK community in 2017.The ARK Summit had more than 250 people attend, selling out the auditorium as well as an overflow room. The Experts Day tabled half a dozen proposals and featured discussion by a small group of invested stakeholders. Both events signaled a big step forward toward creating a community around ARK implementation.The discussions included details on the ARKs in the Open initiative as well as other topics important to ARK users, such as:

• Modifications to the ARK specification and preparing to submit the ARK specification as an IETF Informational RFC,
• How to track the number of minted ARKs world-wide
• Planning to test the use of persistence statements, and
• Developing a survey to gauge the priorities and challenges of ARK users.

In addition to excellent conversation, the events in Paris bolstered support for the ARKs in the Open project.

The list of organizations expressing interest in the project is growing:

• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Bibliothèque nationale de Luxembourg
• Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas – Argentina
• The British Library
• Family Search International
• Institut Internationale de la Marionnette
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Portico
• Sempiternelia
• Texas A&M University Libraries
• University College Dublin
• University of California, San Francisco
• University of Houston Libraries
• University of Maryland
• University of North Texas
• University of Utah

If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the latest developments in this project, please sign up for the ARK mailing list, http://bit.ly/2o7aNew or visit our wiki. To express interest in the ARKs in the Open project, please fill out this form, http://bit.ly/2C4fU8f.

The roadmap is designed to welcome people to the ARKs in the Open project, tell them how to get involved in the project, and present a list of short-term, long-term, and aspirational priorities.

• Roadmap: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSP/Roadmap

The Resources and Value Statement outlines what problems are solved by ARKs, the key metrics for the community’s success, the resources required for product and community development, community engagement, project execution, as well as our unique value proposition.

• The Resources and Value Statement: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSP/Resources+and+Value+Statement

This new documentation was developed by the incubators of the ARK specification at the California Digital Library. Let us know what you think. Add your voice!

In addition, the ARKs in the Open project is very proud to have attracted interest and support from the following organizations in North America and Europe:

• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• The British Library
• Family Search International
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Portico
• University College Dublin
• University of Houston Libraries
• University of Maryland
• University of North Texas
• University of Utah

Do you want to be part of defining the ARK roadmap and value proposition? You can do so by commenting on the linked documents above or by filling out our expression of interest form, http://bit.ly/2C4fU8f.

• We provide high-quality, affordable identifiers, supporting today’s and tomorrow’s scholarship.
• We collaborate with libraries, archives, museums, publishers, research institutes, data centers, and educational institutions.
• We work openly to help the world to know itself through time by providing long-term access to global cultural and scientific heritage.

The new vision statement is published here on our wiki, http://bit.ly/2FrCpSe, and on our mailing list: http://bit.ly/2o7aNew.  Let us know what you think by commenting on the wiki page or signing up for the ARK mailing list.

In addition, the ARKs in the Open project is very proud to have attracted interest and support from the following organizations in North America and Europe:

• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• The British Library
• University College Dublin
• University of Houston Libraries
• University of Maryland
• University of North Texas
• National Center for Atmospheric Research
• Portico

Do you want to be part of defining the vision and future for the ARKs in the Open project? You can say so by filling out our expression of interest form, http://bit.ly/2C4fU8f.