Create your own non-resolving persistent identifiers

An early Seeding the Commons project by University of Wollongong needed to create a policy for creating unique keys  for records and persistent identifiers (PIDs) for objects to populate Research Data Australia.
Wollongong did not have access to a handles server or similar infrastructure so this was their answer.

Types of object in RDA

• Parties
• Collections
• Activities
• Services

Each object record requires a ‘key’, one key per RIF-CS record. In addition to this key, any number of ‘identifiers’ can be assigned to an object (within a record). These identifiers may be “persistent identifiers” (such as identifiers issued by the National Library of Australia) and will redirect a user who clicks the identifier, back to a pre-determined webpage.

The following rules are used at UOW as a standard for assigning keys and identifiers to objects in the UOW RDA collection.

Generating Object Keys (one per record)

The Key for all objects will be generated within UOW. They will be of the format:

uow.edu.au/PTY/123 or uow.edu.au/COL/456 or uow.edu.au/ACT/789

where:

uow.edu.au is the unique prefix used by the University of Wollongong

/PTY indicates the identifier is for a party

/COL indicates the identifier is for a collection

/ACT indicates the identifier is for an activity

/SER indicates the identifier is for a service

/### is a unique number

This information provides a good solution for other institutions in the same situation

Generating Object Identifiers (for objects in a record)

Persistent Identifiers are represented in RDA as a clickable link. Ideally for datasets, the link will direct the user to a location where the actual dataset is available for download. However, not all datasets will be available for download. The following principles will be adhered to when entering identifiers for objects into RDA.

• For parties, persistent identifiers will be sought from the National Library of Australia (NLA). Until the NLA identifier is assigned, no identifier will be entered into RDA for that party.
• For collections, a persistent identifier will be manually minted through the ANDS – Identify my Data Service. The guide to this service can be found here
• Where the dataset is available for public download, the ANDS persistent identifier will resolve to the URL at which the data can be downloaded. 
• If the dataset is not available for download, the identifier will resolve to an information page on the dataset or the ANDS Handle Register (i.e. this will be a circular link).
• For activities, no persistent identifier is required for Research Data Australia. The project number assigned by the funding body is used as an identifier. This can be used to search on Google to obtain more information about the project.  A persistent identifier will be minted through the ANDS – Identify my Data Service.