Identifiers
Identifiers are an essential component of the TRR379 research data management (RDM) approach. This is reflected in the visible organization of information on the consortium website, but also in the schemas that define the structure of metadata on TRR379 outputs.
Many systems for identifying particular types of entities have been developed. A well-known example is DOI for digital objects, most commonly used for publications. However, many others exist, like ROR for research organizations, or Cognitive Atlas for concepts, tasks, and phenotypes related to human cognition.
RDM in the TRR379 aims to employ and align with existing systems as much as possible to maximize interoperability with other efforts and solutions. However, no particular identifier system is required or exclusively adopted by TRR379.
Instead, anything and everything that is relevant for TRR379 has an identifier in a TRR379-specific namespace.
TRR379 identifier namespace
TRR379 uses URIs as identifiers that map onto the structure of the main consortium website.
For example, the full TRR379 identifier for the spokesperson Ute Habel is https://trr379.de/contributors/ute-habel.
In this URI, https://trr379.de is the unique TRR379-specific namespace prefix, contributors/ute-habel is the TRR379-specific identifier for Ute Habel (where contributors is a sub-namespace for agents that in some way contribute to the consortium).
Even though Ute Habel can also identified by the ORCID
0000-0003-0703-7722, via the quasi-standard identifier system for researchers, this alternative identifier is considered an optional, alternative identifier rather than a requirement for TRR379 RDM.
The reasons for this approach are simplicity, and flexibility.
An identifier in TRR379 RDM is a simple text label, in a self-managed namespace. This self-managed namespace can cover any and all entity types that require identification with TRR379. In many cases, an identifier directly maps to a page on the main consortium website. This is a simple strategy to document the nature of any entity. It also establishes the main website as a central, straightforward instrument for communicating and deduplicating identifiers in a distributed research consortium.
Alignment with other identifiers
Even though any relevant entity can receive a TRR379-specific identifier with the approach described above, the utility of these identifier is limited to TRR379-specific procedures and activities. However, a TRR379 metadata record on a research site (e.g., https://trr379.de/sites/aachen ) can be annotated with any alternative identifier for the same entity (e.g., https://ror.org/04xfq0f34 ). Thereby it is possible to combine the benefits of a self-governed, project-specific identifier namespace with the superior discoverability and interoperability of established identification systems for particular entities.
Identifiers for particular entities
The additional documentation linked below provides more information on particular identifiers used by TRR379.