GENWiki

Internet Architecture Board (IAB) J. Levine Request for Comments: 7669 Taughannock Networks Category: Informational October 2015 ISSN: 2070-1721

            Assigning Digital Object Identifiers to RFCs

Abstract

 This document describes the way that Digital Object Identifiers
 (DOIs) are assigned to past and future RFCs.  The DOI is a widely
 used system that assigns unique identifiers to digital documents that
 can be queried and managed in a consistent fashion.

Status of This Memo

 This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
 published for informational purposes.

 This document is a product of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
 and represents information that the IAB has deemed valuable to
 provide for permanent record.  It represents the consensus of the
 Internet Architecture Board (IAB).  Documents approved for
 publication by the IAB are not a candidate for any level of Internet
 Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

 Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
 and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
 http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7669.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
 document authors.  All rights reserved.

 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
 (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
 publication of this document.  Please review these documents
 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
 to this document.

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Table of Contents

 1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
 2.  Structure and Resolution of DOIs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
 3.  DOIs for RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
 4.  The Process of Assigning DOIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.1.  Getting a DOI Prefix  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.2.  Retroactively Assigning DOIs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.3.  Assigning DOIs to New RFCs  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.4.  Use of DOIs in RFCs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   4.5.  Possible Future Work  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
 5.  Internationalization  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
 6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
 7.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
 IAB Members at the Time of Approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
 Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1. Introduction

 The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system assigns unique identifiers
 to digital documents that can be queried and managed in a consistent
 fashion.  The structure of DOIs is defined by ISO 26324:2012
 [ISO-DOI] and is implemented by a group of registration agencies
 coordinated by the International DOI Foundation.

 Each DOI is associated with bibliographic metadata about the object,
 including one or more URIs where the object can be found.  The
 metadata is stored in a public database with entries retrieved via
 HTTP.

 DOIs are widely used by publishers and consumers of technical
 journals and other technical material published online.

 Page 15 of [CITABILITY] indicates that (note that citations have been
 omitted):

    Typical web addresses are unreliable for locating online
    resources, because they can move, change or disappear entirely.
    But persistent identifiers are fixed, with an infrastructure that
    allows for the location of the item to be updated.  The result is
    that the identifier can provide persistent access to the data.
    DataCite provides such a service, and DOIs (used by DataCite) were
    by far the identifier most commonly mentioned by interviewees,
    closely followed by Handles (on which the DOI system is built).
    There was a keen preference for DOIs from interviewees because
    this is a system already used and understood by publishers for
    traditional publications and so the barrier to uptake would
    presumably be lower than for an entirely novel system.

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 Some scholarly publishers accept DOIs as references in published
 documents, and some versions of BibTeX can automatically retrieve the
 bibliographic data for a DOI and format it.  DOIs may have other
 advantages, such as making it easier to find the free online versions
 of RFCs rather than paywalled copies when following references or
 using some document indexes.

 The benefits of DOIs apply equally to documents from all of the RFC
 submission streams, so all RFCs are assigned DOIs.

2. Structure and Resolution of DOIs

 DOIs are an application of the Handle System defined by RFCs
 [RFC3650], [RFC3651], and [RFC3652].  For example, a DOI for an RFC
 might be as follows:

    10.17487/rfc1149

 The first part of a DOI is the number 10, which means a DOI within
 the Handle System, followed by a dot and a unique number assigned to
 a publisher, in this case 17487.  This part is the DOI prefix.
 Following that is a slash and a text string assigned by the
 publisher, called the DOI suffix.

 DOIs are treated as opaque identifiers.  The DOI suffixes assigned to
 RFCs are currently based on the "doc-id" field of the RFC index in
 XML (rfc-index.xml), but the suffix of future RFCs might be based on
 something else if circumstances change.  Hence, the reliable way to
 find the DOI for an RFC is not to guess, but to look it up in the RFC
 index or on the RFC Editor website <https://www.rfc-editor.org/>.
 RFC references created from entries in the usual bibxml libraries
 will have DOIs included automatically.

 Although the Handle System has its own protocol described in
 [RFC3652], the usual way to look up a DOI is to use web lookup.  A
 proposed "doi:" URN was never widely implemented, so the standard way
 to look up a DOI is to use the public HTTP proxy at
 <https://dx.doi.org>.  The example DOI above could be looked up at:

    https://dx.doi.org/10.17487/rfc1149

 Whenever a publisher assigns a DOI, it provides the bibliographic
 metadata for the object (henceforth called a document, since that is
 what they are in this context) to its registration agency that then
 makes it available to clients that look up DOIs.  The document's
 metadata is typically uploaded to the registration agency in XML
 using an HTTP-based API.  Users or publishing software can retrieve

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 the metadata by fetching the DOI's URL and using standard HTTP
 content negotiation to request application/citeproc+json,
 application/rdf+xml, or other bibliographic formats.

 Publishers have considerable flexibility as to what resides at the
 URI(s) to which a DOI refers.  Sometimes it's the document itself,
 while for commercial publishers it's typically a page with the
 abstract, bibliographic information, and some way to buy the actual
 document.  Because some RFCs are in multiple formats (e.g.,
 Postscript and text), an appropriate URI is that of the RFC Editor's
 info page that has the document's abstract and links to the
 document(s) in various formats.  Hence, the URI above, when fetched
 via an HTTP request that accepts text/html, redirects to:

    https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1149

 More information on the structure and use of DOIs is in the DOI
 Handbook [DOI-HB].

3. DOIs for RFCs

 With DOIs assigned to each RFC, it is useful to include DOI
 information in the XML bibliography as a "seriesInfo" item, so that
 rendering engines can display it if desired.  Online databases and
 indexes that include RFCs should be updated to include the DOI, e.g.,
 the ACM Digital Library.  (A practical advantage of this is that the
 DOI would link directly to the RFC Editor, rather than perhaps to a
 copy of an RFC behind a paywall.)

 Since RFCs are immutable, existing RFCs still don't mention their own
 DOIs within the RFCs themselves, but putting their DOIs into indexes
 would provide value.

4. The Process of Assigning DOIs

 There are three phases to assigning DOIs to RFCs: getting a DOI
 prefix, retroactively assigning DOIs to existing documents, and
 updating the publication process to assign DOIs as new RFCs are
 published.

4.1. Getting a DOI Prefix

 There are ten registration agencies [DOI-RA] that assign DOI
 prefixes.  Most of them serve specialized audiences or limited
 geographic areas, but there are a few that handle scholarly and
 technical materials.  All registration agencies charge for DOIs to
 defray the cost of maintaining the metadata databases.

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 The RFC Editor chose CrossRef, an agency widely used by journal
 publishers.  The prices associated with CrossRef membership are on
 the order of $660.00 per year for membership, deposit fees of $0.15
 cents per document for a bulk upload of the backfile (the existing
 RFCs), and $1.00 per document to deposit them as they are published.

 The RFC Editor's DOI prefix is 10.17487.

4.2. Retroactively Assigning DOIs

 Other than paying the deposit fees, assigning DOIs to all of the
 existing RFCs was primarily a software problem.  The RFC Production
 Center's internal database was updated to include a DOI field for
 each RFC, the schema for rfc-index.xml was updated to include a DOI
 field, and the scripts that create the XML and text indexes were
 updated to include the DOI for each RFC.  A specialized DOI
 submission script extracted the metadata for all of the RFCs from the
 XML index and submitted it to the registration agency using the
 agency's online API.

4.3. Assigning DOIs to New RFCs

 As RFCs are published, the publication software assigns a DOI to each
 new RFC.  The submission script extracts the metadata for new RFCs
 from the XML index and submits the information for new RFCs to the
 registration agency.

4.4. Use of DOIs in RFCs

 The DOI agency requests that documents that are assigned DOIs in turn
 include DOIs when possible when referring to other organizations'
 documents.  DOIs can be listed using the existing seriesInfo field in
 the xml2rfc reference entity, and authors are requested provide DOIs
 for non-RFC documents when possible.  The RFC Production Center might
 add missing DOIs when it's easy to do so, e.g., when the same
 reference with a DOI has appeared in a prior RFC, or a quick online
 search finds the DOI.  Where the citation libraries include DOIs, the
 output (references created from those citation libraries) will
 include DOIs.

 The RFC Style Guide [RFC-STYLE] has been updated to describe the
 rules for including DOIs in the References sections of RFCs.

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4.5. Possible Future Work

 Since it is usually possible to retrieve the bibliographic
 information for a document from its DOI (as BibTeX can do, described
 above), it might also be worth adding this feature to xml2rfc, so a
 reference with only a DOI could be automatically fetched and
 expanded.

5. Internationalization

 Adding DOIs presents no new internationalization issues.

 Since DOIs are opaque, the characters used in any particular DOI are
 unimportant beyond ensuring that they can be represented where
 needed.  The Handle System says they are UTF-8-encoded Unicode, but
 in practice all DOIs appear to use only printable ASCII characters.
 The metadata for each RFC is uploaded as UTF-8-encoded XML.

6. Security Considerations

 The DOI system adds a new way to locate RFCs and a bibliographic
 database containing a description of each RFC.  The existing
 locations and bibliographic info are essentially unchanged, so there
 is no new dependency on the DOI system.

 Were CrossRef or the DOI database to suffer a security breach, it is
 hypothetically possible that users would be directed to locations
 other than the RFC Editor's web site or would retrieve incorrect
 bibliographic data, but the actual RFCs would remain intact.

7. Informative References

 [CITABILITY]
            Kotarski, R., Reilly, S., Schrimpf, S., Smit, E., and K.
            Walshe, "Report on best practices for citability of data
            and on evolving roles in scholarly communication", 2012,
            <http://www.stm-assoc.org/2012_07_10_STM_Research_Data_
            Group_Data_Citation_and_Evolving_Roles_ODE_Report.pdf>.

 [DOI-HB]   International DOI Foundation, "DOI Handbook",
            DOI 10.1000/182, April 2012, <http://www.doi.org/hb.html>.

 [DOI-RA]   International DOI Foundation, "DOI Registration Agencies",
            July 2015,
            <http://www.doi.org/registration_agencies.html>.

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 [ISO-DOI]  International Organization for Standardization (ISO), "ISO
            26324:2012 Information and documentation -- Digital object
            identifier system", June 2012,
            <http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=43506>.

 [RFC-STYLE]
            RFC Editor, "RFC Editor Style Guide",
            <https://www.rfc-editor.org/styleguide/>.

 [RFC3650]  Sun, S., Lannom, L., and B. Boesch, "Handle System
            Overview", RFC 3650, DOI 10.17487/RFC3650, November 2003,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3650>.

 [RFC3651]  Sun, S., Reilly, S., and L. Lannom, "Handle System
            Namespace and Service Definition", RFC 3651,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC3651, November 2003,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3651>.

 [RFC3652]  Sun, S., Reilly, S., Lannom, L., and J. Petrone, "Handle
            System Protocol (ver 2.1) Specification", RFC 3652,
            DOI 10.17487/RFC3652, November 2003,
            <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3652>.

IAB Members at the Time of Approval

 Jari Arkko (IETF Chair)
 Mary Barnes
 Marc Blanchet
 Ralph Droms
 Ted Hardie
 Joe Hildebrand
 Russ Housley
 Erik Nordmark
 Robert Sparks
 Andrew Sullivan (IAB Chair)
 Dave Thaler
 Brian Trammell
 Suzanne Woolf

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Author's Address

 John Levine
 Taughannock Networks
 PO Box 727
 Trumansburg, NY  14886

 Phone: +1 831 480 2300
 Email: standards@taugh.com
 URI:   http://jl.ly

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