General Glossary of PID Terms

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FDOs need to support the abstraction principle, i.e., abstracting away details that are not needed at the basic object management level. At that level there is no need to distinguish among different types such as data, metadata, software, semantic assertions, etc., for data management operations. Since FDOs can include bit-sequences encoding any kind of content they represent the highest possible abstraction level. Of course, abstraction can be viewed at much more general level. For abstraction in computer science we can refer to Wikipedia: (1) The process of removing or generalizing physical, spatial, or temporal details or attributes in the study of objects or systems to focus attention on details of greater importance; it is similar in nature to the process of generalization; (2) the creation of abstract concept-objects by mirroring common features or attributes of various non-abstract objects or systems of study – the result of the process of abstraction.

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A digital aggregation is a bundle of digital entities.

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Application Programming Interface

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A value that describes a feature of an object or its representation, as part of PID Kernel Information or other metadata.

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FDOs need to support stable bindings among all information entities required for FAIR compliance and machine navigation of the global data space. Core for the stable binding are global, unique, and resolvable persistent identifiers.

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Ordered series of bits that forms a coded representation of data being transfered or stored

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Compliance Assessment Toolkit, a service being developed in the FAIRCORE4EOSC project to assist with EOSC PID Policy compliance assessment

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A collection of FDOs is a structured aggregation of FDOs and is itself an FDO. The bit-sequence of a collection FDO includes its construction using an agreed formal language which specifies the relationships of their constituent members. Collections include recursivity, i.e., collections can include collections.

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The process of determining to what extent a service, object, organisation, or capabilities comply with a set of criteria, based on reproducible tests

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Coordination and Support Action

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The landing page or most common target of resolution. These are generally provided by the Manager or the Owner of the resource in addition to Kernel Metadata, and should in almost all cases be the authoritative version of the metadata. The Custom Metadata either extends the Kernel Metadata, or maps to it.

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Common Workflow Language

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A digital collection is an aggregation which contains DOs and DEs. The collection is identified by a PID and described by metadata.

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A digital Entity denotes any sort of bit sequence that is being stored or transmitted without being registered to enable sharing.

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A Digital Object has a bit sequence that can be stored in multiple repositories and is associated with a Persistent Identifier (PID) and metadata.

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A digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier based on Handle used to identify objects uniquely, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). A Digital Object has a bit sequence that can be stored in multiple repositories and is associated with a Persistent Identifier (PID) and
metadata.

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Description of Action

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Digital Object Identifier

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European Commission

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A federation of computing and storage resource providers

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Encapsulation in OOP it means wrapping data & methods enabling information hiding. Ideally for FDO it would also mean to bundle operation and FDOs without the need to know (much) about the internal structure of the FDO. Thus, FDOs need to support encapsulation, means to enable high-level operations on all levels of the FDOs layered structure including the data encoding FDOs content. Since FDO's resources such as its bit-sequences and its different metadata are managed by external repositories, there will be some hurdles to overcome. Details will be the topic of coming discussions.

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European Open Science Cloud, An integrated infrastructure to create a web of FAIR data. The development of EOSC is a large and ongoing multi-stakeholder initiative.

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The policy being developed by the EOSC PID Policy and Implementation Task Force to ensure a minimum standard of performance for the PID ecosystem in EOSC

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EOSC PID Policy and Implementation Task Force (https://eosc.eu/advisory-groups/pid-policy-implementation/)

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European Research Infrastructure Consortium

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European Union

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FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable)

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A model proposed by the Turning FAIR into Reality report, denoting what elements are needed for a Digital Object to be FAIR and thus machine actionable. A FAIR digital object is a unit composed of data that is a sequence of bits, or a set of sequences of bits, each of the sequences being structured (typed) in a way that is interpretable by one or more computer systems, and having as essential elements an assigned globally unique and persistent identifier (PID), a type definition for the object as a whole and a metadata description (which itself can be another FAIR digital object) of the properties of the object, making the whole findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable both by humans and computers for the reliable interpretation and processing of the data represented by the object.

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FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. It refers to the FAIR Data Principles developed by the FORCE 11 community, that recommend data should be shared according to these four concepts. https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618

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FAIR Digital Object

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Kernel Attributes that are included in PID Records need to be defined according to a schema defined by FDO Forum and are registered in an open registry managed by the FDO Forum.

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FDOs can appear in many different configurations but nevertheless fulfilling the FDO Requirement Specifications.There are different ways to organise the internal structure of an FDO and fullfilling different purposes.

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Classes of FDO Types are called FDO Genres.

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The FDO Model layer consists of all specifications, protocols, services that are necessary to enable the interpretation of the FDO profiles, attributes and types by humans and machines.

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A profile defines the set of FDO properties as being used as kernel attributes by a service provider when registering a PID. An FDO Profile makes the result of the PID resolution predictable and only defined and registered kernel attributes can be used. Each PID registration must be associated with a FDO Profile and the reference to the profile must be determined by a mandatory attribute in the PID Record. The FDO Profile is an FDO and has a specified and unified structure. The attributes being specified in the PID Profile and instantiated in the PID Records need to be registered and defined in open and recognised registries.

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Profiles must be registered in open registries according to a schema specified by FDO Forum

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FDO profiles will be structured in a unified way according to a detailed (schema) specification.

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The FDO is binding all information about included bit-sequences and associated metadata with the help of the FDO PID record or landing page. Bit-Sequences and metadata information in general are managed by external repositories. All these resources linked at are called FDOresources.

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An attribute asscociated with an FDO that specifies to machines how to process the FDO's internal structure and bit-sequence if present.

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This is the set of specifications and registry definitions that describe how "types" in the realm of FDOs are being used. "Types" in the realm of FDO appear as "types of kernel attributes" being used in FDO records, "types of FDOs" to describe the nature of bit-sequences included in FDOs. Registries are used to register FDO types, Kernel Attributes and FDO Profiles.

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Grant Agreement to the project

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The varying levels of hierarchy or constituent parts that may form data or other research outputs. For example, the differing levels of granularity of a research publication, going from a whole Journal issue, the level of detail in a large scientific database. to its constituent articles, to the article constituent sections or figures, the levels in a complex scientific collection or the level of detail in a large scientific database.
With respect to the timing of PID assignment and the issues of granularity and versioning, there are different practices across domains and PID service providers. Repositories (and other data providers) need to make clear which policies they apply, particularly with respect to the recommended timing of assignment, and the granularity needed. However, a few rules of thumb can be given, including 1) In general a DO should be assigned a PID as early as possible, at least at the time it is uploaded into a trustworthy repository; 2) In order to optimally support citations and later re-use, PIDs should in general be assigned to the smallest “chunks” of scientifically meaningful digital information (“data”) that is practical to refer to. This often translates into a high granularity, but there are many exceptions where it is desirable to assign a PID to e.g. large data sets or to collections.

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The granularity of an FDO describes the size and scope of the included content encoded by a bit-sequence. The granularity for building FDOs is dependent on pragmatic utility decisions within community of practices: what are useful entities to work with in the corresponding application field. Early choices can always be revised by (1) breaking up the bit-sequences of a given FDO in parts and create new FDOs assigned to the parts or (2) by aggregating individual FDOs into collections which are also FDOs

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A Handle is a globally resolvable, unique and persistent PID which is defined by RFCs 3650, 3651 and 3652 of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). They are used by DOI, ePIC and many other service providers. The Handle System is governed by the independent Swiss DONA Foundation

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High-Performance Computing

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Information about the account that created the identifier, date of creation and modification, and the current redirection URL(s) that are linked to the identifier. This metadata is maintained by the resolution service in a registry. Can be combined with Resource Metadata in some cases.

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International Generic Sample Number

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Each FDO identified by a PID can be accessed or operated on using an interface protocol by specifying the PID of a registered operation. Since the FDO is a generic core model for data, it is possible to specify a unique protocol.

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International Standard Name Identifier

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International Organisation for Standardisation