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Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Anton Güntsch‡, Quentin Groom§, Roger Hyam|, Simon Chagnoux¶, Dominik Röpert‡, Walter G. Berendsohn#, Ana Casino¤, Gabriele Droege‡, Willfred Gerritsen«, Jörg Holetschek‡, Karol Marhold», Patricia Mergen§,˄, Heimo Rainer˅, Vincent Stuart Smith¦, Dagmar Triebelˀ
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Corresponding author: Anton Güntsch (a.guentsch@bgbm.org)
Received: 14 May 2018 | Published: 21 May 2018
© 2018 Anton Güntsch, Quentin Groom, Roger Hyam, Simon Chagnoux, Dominik Röpert, Walter G. Berendsohn, Ana Casino, Gabriele Droege, Willfred Gerritsen, Jörg Holetschek, Karol Marhold, Patricia Mergen, Heimo Rainer, Vincent Smith, Dagmar Triebel
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Güntsch A, Groom Q, Hyam R, Chagnoux S, Röpert D, Berendsohn W, Casino A, Droege G, Gerritsen W, Holetschek J, Marhold K, Mergen P, Rainer H, Smith V, Triebel D (2018) Standardised Globally Unique Specimen Identifiers. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 2: e26658. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.2.26658
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Abstract
A simple, permanent and reliable specimen identifier system is needed to take the informatics of collections into a new era of interoperability. A system of identifiers based on HTTP URI (Uniform Resource Identifiers), endorsed by the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF), has now been rolled out to 14 member organisations (
CETAF-Identifiers have a Linked Open Data redirection mechanism for both human- and machine-readable access and, if fully implemented, provide Resource Description Framework (RDF) -encoded specimen data following best practices continuously improved by members of the initiative. To date, more than 20 million physical collection objects have been equipped with CETAF Identifiers (
To facilitate the implementation of stable identifiers, simple redirection scripts and guidelines for deciding on the local identifier syntax have been compiled (http://cetafidentifiers.biowikifarm.net/wiki/Main_Page). Furthermore, a capable "CETAF Specimen URI Tester" (http://herbal.rbge.info/) provides an easy-to-use service for testing whether the existing identifiers are operational.
For the usability and potential of any identifier system associated with evolving data objects, active links to the source information are critically important. This is particularly true for natural history collections facing the next wave of industrialised mass digitisation, where specimens come online with only basic, but rapidly evolving label data. Specimen identifier systems must therefore have components for monitoring the availability and correct implementation of individual data objects. Our next implementation steps will involve the development of a "Semantic Specimen Catalogue", which has a list of all existing specimen identifiers together with the latest RDF metadata snapshot. The catalogue will be used for semantic inference across collections as well as the basis for periodic testing of identifiers.
Keywords
specimen identifier; collection management; linked open data
Presenting author
Anton Güntsch
Author contributions
All authors contributed to the discussion, specification and implementation of stable identifiers in different natural history collections.
References
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Data management: Stable identifiers for collection specimens.Nature546(7656):33‑33. https://doi.org/10.1038/546033d
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Actionable, long-term stable and semantic web compatible identifiers for access to biological collection objects.Database2017(1):‑
1 . https://doi.org/10.1093/database/bax0039