Internet Architecture Board (IAB) J. Levine

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: [email protected]
URI: http://jl.ly

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