DRAFT
This document outlines a proposal for the structure of a persistent identifier which is assigned to a document at the time of its creation, remains with the document throughout its life, and is used in references in order to identify the document or any component part of it. The design of the reference code is based on the principles that it should be easy for both a human author and a computer program to construct and use; it should give an indication of the origination and purpose of the document; and it should be easy to ensure that the identifier assigned to a document at the time of its creation has not already been used.
The proposed form for the document identifier or reference code is:
[institutional id] . [origination] / [destination] / [textual id] / [date] / [version] # [component]
A code to identifying the institution which generated the document. When referencing documents within the same institution, this element could be omitted.
A code to indicate the originator of the document within the institution identified by the preceding identifier.
This may be a body, such as a committee, or it may be an individual in their role as an officer of the institution, such as the Secretary of Court. In the latter case, the origination code should identify the role or office rather than the identity of the individual occupying that role or office at the time - the latter information would be available as part of the contextual information (the "metadata") associated with the target document.
It is not proposed that this code be a composite identifier : its sole purpose is to distinguish between originating bodies, not to specify hierarchical (or other) relationships between them.
Clearly, such a system requires that an appropriate authority within the University take responsibility for the maintenance of a list of origination codes and that all document creators conform to that "authority list" of origination codes. In order to make this task manageable, and in order to ensure that the code serves its purpose of indicating the common origin of distinct documents, a body's code should be changed only when there is a change in its function or remit. The codes associated with obsolete bodies should not be reused.
A code identifying the destination or intended recipient of the document, drawn from the same source as the origination code.
Where the origination and the destination are the same (as for example in the case of committee agenda or minutes documents), the destination code should be omitted, though its omission must be indicated by the presence of a "null" value, as illustrated in the examples below.
There will also be a limited set of destination codes for use to indicate that the document is for a non-specific readership, either internally to the University ("int"), externally ("ext") or generally ("gen").
The textual identifier should be a concise and useful reflection of the document content.
For a standard committee document type, the content of this element should be used consistently, and a list of standard codes will be provided. These codes must be distinct from any code used as an origination or destination code, and for this reason it is suggested that they be limited to one character, and all origination codes have a minimum length of two characters. At present, the suggested standard types are "a" for agenda, and "m" for minutes.
For reports from one body to another - for example, submissions to a committee meeting - the textual identifier should be sufficient to distinguish between several submissions to one meeting by the same body.
For documents for general readership, the textual identifier must distinguish between documents produced by the same body on the same date.
There will be some limitations (to be confirmed) on the length of this element and the character set available.
For a standard committee document type or a report to a committee meeting, the date of the meeting.
For a document intended for general readership, the date of creation of the document. Any subsequent versions of the document will retain this date and be distinguished by their version number.
The form of the date should be yyyy-mm-dd.
The version of the document, in the form of an integer. The presence of a version number in a reference is mandatory.
The identifier of any sub-unit of the document. The absence of a component identifier indicates a reference to an entire document.
The form of component identifiers (item numbers, section numbers, paragraph numbering in reports etc.) is not addressed in this document but requires some consideration. For example, the practice of numbering items in the minutes sequentially throughout the academic session enables an author to reference an item without knowing the identifier of the containing document. The proposed system, however, suggests that the target document must always be specified (or implied).
Every document should be assigned a full reference code by its creator at the time of document creation.
When using a code to refer to a document or part of a document, an author can abbreviate the reference string with sensitivity to the context of its use. For example, when referring to other documents originating within the University of Glasgow, it is not necessary to specify the institutional identifier; likewise, when a committee document references another document generated by that same committee, the origination code would not be required. The exception to this rule is the case of a report submitted by one body to another, when the codes of both the originator and the receiver must always be specified to avoid ambiguity.
In short, any use of the reference code must be specific enough to identify unambiguously the unit(s) in question.
The initial version of the agenda for a meeting of the Information Services Committee held on 1 May 1998 would be created with the identifier
isc//a/1998-05-01/1
The minutes of the same meeting would have the identifier
isc//m/1998-05-01/1
A report from the Information Users Committee to this meeting would have the identifier
iuc/isc/report/1998-05-01/1
Or, if the IUC submitted several documents, they would require distinct identifiers:
iuc/isc/report/1998-05-01/1
and
iuc/isc/review/1998-05-01/1
References to this document from other documents of either committee would require the use of this form of the identifier, since a reference beginning "isc...." would tend to suggest that the target document was created by the Information Services Committee
A reference in a minutes document to the previous minutes of the same committee would not require the presence of the origination code or destination code, though it might be advisable to use them for clarity. So in the ISC minutes of 1 May, a reference to the minutes of the previous meeting of 14 February could have the form
m/1998-02-14/1
though the form
isc//m/1998-02-14/1
might be less open to misinterpretation.
A document of more general purpose than those intended for submission to a specific meeting would omit the destination code and the textual identifier would be followed by its date of creation. So for example, a Computing Service document on desktop standards might have the identifier
cs/int/desktop/1998-05-08/1
Subsequent versions would maintain the same creation date, regardless of when the actual modification took place. So version 2 of this document, as amended some months later, would have the identifier:
cs/int/desktop/1998-05-08/2
Most documents arriving from external sources will have their own reference code, in which case all that is required is to preface that with an institutional identifier for the source organisation and an appropriate destination code - either "gen" if it is a document directed to a general readership, or "gla" if it was directed specifically to the University of Glasgow. For example
shefc/gen/"C1/98"
In this case, the external reference must be surrounded by quotation marks to signal that the "/" characters within it are not to be processed as delimiters of elements of the Glasgow reference code.
However, in order to map this identifier to the physical location of an electronic copy of the document on an external server, the creator of the referring document will have to supply a URL.
A general document from the Court Office to SHEFC might have an identifier of the form:
co/shefc/comments/1998-05-01
A specific response to a document from an external source would use the (externally-generated) reference code of that document as the textual identifier. e.g. a response to JISC circular C1/98 would have the form:
co/jisc/"C1/98"/1998-06-01
Prepared by:
Version: 3