Identifiers.org and MIRIAM Registry: community resources to provide persistent identification

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Informatics
• Data Management
• Scientific Standards

Background:

• The Minimum Information Required in the Annotation of Models Registry (MIR) was established in 2005 to provide persistent, location-independent identifiers for biomedical data.
• Existing MIR infrastructure utilized Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) generated from a shared catalogue of data collections and metadata.
• The system required updates to accommodate evolving data landscapes and improve identifier resolution.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a new parallel identification scheme for enhanced data management.
• To describe the updated software infrastructure supporting the identification system.
• To present the Identifiers.org service for directly resolvable Uniform Resource Locators (URLs).

Main Methods:

• Development of a new parallel identification scheme.
• Updating the underlying software infrastructure for identifier management.
• Integration of the MIR catalogue with the Identifiers.org resolution service.

Main Results:

• Implementation of a new parallel identification scheme for MIR.
• Deployment of an updated software infrastructure.
• Launch of Identifiers.org, providing directly resolvable URLs for data entities.
• Demonstrated flexibility of the system for various scientific fields requiring unambiguous data identification.

Conclusions:

• The enhanced MIR system and Identifiers.org provide a robust solution for persistent and resolvable data identification.
• The new scheme and services improve accessibility and usability of biomedical data resources.
• The system's flexibility supports its application beyond biomedicine for any domain needing unique data entity identification.