Oh boy, another one.
Another persistent identifier company has emerged: Unique Object Identifier.
I learned recently about the launch of a new persistent identifier targeting the scholarly publishing domain: Unique Object Identifier. In January of this year, I wrote about an earlier effort, the Scientific Object Identifier. Pretty soon, our objects will be drowning in identifiers.
The Unique Object Identifier system, which appears to be an implementation of the handle system, was started by a firm called Savari Technologies Pvt. Ltd. It is based in Pune, India and appears to be chiefly an Internet Service Provider.
The predominant identifier system in scholarly publishing is made available by Cossref, a non-profit organization with wide membership of companies in the scholarly publishing industry — perhaps too wide. Crossref markets the ubiquitous DOI, the digital object identifier.
Another circular logo.
As somebody once said, “The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them.”
Let’s hope the number of “unique” identifiers doesn’t surpass the number of predatory publishers
