A System for Distributed Minting and Management of Persistent Identifiers

Abstract

Minting persistent identifiers and managing their metadata is typically governed by a single organization. Such a single point of failure poses a risk to longevity and long-term preservation of identifiers. In this paper we address the risk by proposing a radically different approach, in which minting and management of persistent identifiers is distributed, and the integrity of the distributed system is guaranteed by public-key cryptography. We describe the general architecture of the system, analyse its robustness and discuss potential deployment scenarios.