RFC 7669

Assigning Digital Object Identifiers to RFCs

📅 published October 2015, from ietf

Assigning Digital Object Identifiers to RFCs 🎀

Title block tea ☕: this one's from the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), written by J. Levine of Taughannock Networks. It's Informational (not a standards-track thing), dated October 2015, and it's RFC 7669 with ISSN 2070-1721. The title block doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, so it's just vibing on its own. 💅

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

Abstract

okay so this doc is all about how Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) get handed out to past AND future RFCs 🦋 DOIs are a super popular system that gives unique IDs to digital docs, and you can query and manage them in a consistent way. literally so clean.

Status of This Memo

this one is NOT an Internet Standards Track spec, bestie. It's published purely for info 📚

It's a product of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and holds stuff the IAB decided is worth keeping on the permanent record ✨ It represents the consensus of the IAB. Docs the IAB approves for publication are not a candidate for any level of Internet Standard, so check Section 2 of RFC 5741 if you want the deets.

For the current status, any errata, and how to send feedback, head to http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7669 🫶

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

This doc is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) as they stand on the date this was published. Please actually read these, because they spell out your rights and restrictions for this document 🙈

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 ✨

okay so the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system gives unique IDs to digital docs that you can query and manage consistently 💖 The DOI structure is defined by ISO 26324:2012 [ISO-DOI], and a bunch of registration agencies run it, coordinated by the International DOI Foundation.

Every DOI is tied to bibliographic metadata about the object, including one or more URIs where you can find it. That metadata lives in a public database, and you grab the entries over HTTP 🌸

DOIs are everywhere with publishers and readers of technical journals and other tech material published online. 📚

On page 15 of [CITABILITY], they say this (citations removed):

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.

Some scholarly publishers take DOIs as references in published docs, and some versions of BibTeX can automatically pull the bibliographic data for a DOI and format it for you 🤩 DOIs may have other perks too, like making it easier to find the free online versions of RFCs instead of paywalled copies when you're 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 get DOIs. Period. 👑

2. Structure and Resolution of DOIs

DOIs are an application of the Handle System, which is defined by RFCs [RFC3650], [RFC3651], and [RFC3652]. Here's an example DOI for an RFC:

10.17487/rfc1149

The first part of a DOI is the number 10, which means it's a DOI within the Handle System. Then comes a dot and a unique number assigned to a publisher, in this case 17487. That's the DOI prefix 🧚 After that is a slash and a text string the publisher assigns, called the DOI suffix.

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

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

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

Whenever a publisher assigns a DOI, it sends the bibliographic metadata for the object (which we'll just call a document from here on, since that's what they are in this context) to its registration agency. The agency then makes it available to clients looking up DOIs. The metadata is usually uploaded to the registration agency in XML using an HTTP-based API. Users or publishing software can grab the metadata by fetching the DOI's URL and using standard HTTP content negotiation to ask for application/citeproc+json, application/rdf+xml, or other bibliographic formats 💅

Publishers have a lot of freedom over what lives at the URI(s) a DOI points to. Sometimes it's the document itself. For commercial publishers, it's usually a page with the abstract, bibliographic info, and a way to buy the actual document. Some RFCs come in multiple formats (like Postscript and text), so the right URI is the RFC Editor's info page, which has the abstract and links to the doc in its various formats. So the URI above, when fetched with an HTTP request that accepts text/html, redirects to:

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

For more on the structure and use of DOIs, check out the DOI Handbook [DOI-HB]. 📖

3. DOIs for RFCs

Now that every RFC has a DOI, it's useful to put DOI info in the XML bibliography as a "seriesInfo" item, so rendering engines can show it if they want to 💜 Online databases and indexes that include RFCs should be updated to include the DOI, e.g., the ACM Digital Library. (Bonus perk: the DOI links straight to the RFC Editor, not maybe to a copy of an RFC stuck behind a paywall 🫶)

Since RFCs are immutable, existing RFCs still don't mention their own DOIs inside the RFCs themselves. But putting their DOIs into indexes would still add a lot of value ✨

6. Security Considerations 🔐

okay so the DOI system adds a brand new way to find RFCs, plus a bibliographic database that describes each one 📚✨ the existing locations and bibliographic info are basically unchanged, so there is no new dependency on the DOI system 🫶 no cap, your old links still work the same way

⚠️ Lowkey dramatic moment: if CrossRef or the DOI database ever got breached, it is hypothetically possible that users could get sent to locations other than the RFC Editor's web site, or pull up 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>. 🌸

[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

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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