Hi Miriam et al.,

It is my understanding that a DOI itself is digital, but it can refer to a physical sample or other physical data like it can refer to some digital data. Physical samples are clearly data and informational and using DOI's to refer to these is a good idea. Physical samples that are scanned to produce digital data about the sample may not last as long as the digital data. Whether it is worth assigning a DOI comes down to how long that sample is going to be around. If it's not likely to be around for long enough for it to be reused then it probably isn't worth it. What that means in practice is probably at least weeks, but then I suppose that depends on how fast the field is.

In terms of tissue samples, these clearly are data in my mind. Indeed, by extension, whole organisms are too in stored contexts. The thing I struggle with is if there is scope to use a DOI to refer to an individual person or a collection of people that may have been part of a study, are not stored for further study, but can be found via addresses for further study. If there is a DOI for a living person, I'd really like to hear about it.

Regards,

Andy

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From: Research Data Management discussion list [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of M. Casula [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 19 September 2013 21:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: DataCite DOIs and tissue samples


Hello,



Sometime ago an inquiry was posted on my behalf regarding the use of DOIs for tissue samples to enable their citation in derivative works.



The added value of aknowledging the source should not be underestimated, as it gives due credit to the curators and donors, and promotes use of the samples for further research. This is infact what is motivating my interest to assign identifiers to tissue samples.



While in principle it is feasible to use DOIs with tissue samples (by having them resolve to metadata about the samples themselves) the question arises as to whether a digital object identifier should be used for something real as opposed to something digital? Although this may seem somewhat academic, there is a practical issue in this particular case because tissue samples are gradually consumed and will eventually no longer exist. In which case, I wonder whether the use of DOIs to identify real things is advisable?



Any advice and/or opinion would be welcome.



Kind regards,

Miriam





Miriam Casula, PhD
Neuropathology Department
Academic Medical Centre
University of Amsterdam
Meibergdreef 9
The Netherlands
Tel: +31205665649

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