EZID Help

My Account

Set up an account.

To set up an account with EZID, please visit the contact us page and send us an email inquiry.

Edit account information

Once you have an EZID account, you can edit your name, address, phone number, and password on the My Account page. You can also designate a co-owner for the identifiers in your account.

What is co-ownership?

Co-ownership is when one EZID user account designates another EZID user account as co-owner of the first account's identifiers. This gives the second EZID user account the right to manage and edit detailed information about an identifier.

Create Identifiers

Simple create form vs. advanced create form.

In the simple create form, you can create an identifier and fill in a brief description of the object being identified. In the advanced create form, you have the additional options of adding a custom remainder (suffix) to the identifier, the ability to delay publishing of identifier, and also the capability to select different ways of describing their objects.

Which identifier should I choose?

DOIs have a brand that is well established in the scholarly publishing and archiving world. Use DOIs to register objects under good long-term management. Researchers may choose a DOI for materials being published.

ARKs have some additional levels of flexibility: they are case-sensitive; they can distinguish between special characters and adopt predictable behavior; and they can be deleted. Researchers may choose to use ARKs during the early stages of a research project and for unpublished materials associated with an object that has been registered with a DOI.

Why should I describe my object with metadata?

Adding descriptive metadata to an identifier can help others find, cite and reuse your object in the future. Metadata is information (data) about the object, such as the name of the object's creator, the date of creation, the target URL, the version of the object, its title, and so on. EZID allows you to enter metadata at the same time you request the identifier as well as later. If you are creating a DOI, you are required to supply a minimum set of citation metadata specified by DataCite:

• Creator (The main researchers involved in producing the data, or the authors of the publication)
• Title (A name or title by which a resource is known. Should distinguish the resource from others.)
• Publisher (The name of the entity that holds, archives, publishes, prints, distributes, releases, issues, or produces the resource.)
• PublicationYear (The year when the data was or will be made publicly available.)

If the completion of any of these fields presents a difficulty, use the following standard (machine-recognizable) codes. However, we recommend that you review the resulting effect on the sample citation created from the metadata provided. This is visible on the Manage page.

• (:unac) temporarily inaccessible
• (:unal) unallowed, suppressed intentionally
• (:unap) not applicable, makes no sense
• (:unas) value unassigned (e.g., Untitled)
• (:unav) value unavailable, possibly unknown
• (:unkn) known to be unknown (e.g., Anonymous, Inconnue)
• (:none) never had a value, never will
• (:null) explicitly and meaningfully empty
• (:tba) to be assigned or announced later
• (:etal) too numerous to list (et alia).
• (:at) the real value is at the given URL or identifier.

An additional piece of metadata is not required, but is highly desirable and a best practice. That is:

• ResourceType (The general type of a resource: Collection, Dataset, Event, Film, Image, InteractiveResource, Model, PhysicalObject, Service, Software, Sound, or Text)

What does it mean to publish an identifier?

Publication of an identifier means making the identifier, its target URL and associate metadata publicly available.

Advanced create identifier form

Custom remainders (suffixes) should be unique and opaque. By opaque, it is meant that the alphanumeric string has no meaning. EZID strongly discourages placing brand strings in the remainder because successor organizations do not often honor previous brand and name assignments.

Because it is difficult to do this manually, it is recommended that EZID generate new identifiers in order to guarantee that they are unique and opaque.

Which citation profile should I use?

DataCite Kernel: when registering a DOI for a dataset, the DataCite Kernel is required as a minimum set of metadata. If a richer set of descriptive capability is desired, choose the full DataCite Schema, which is documented here: http://schema.datacite.org/

Dublin Core: the Dublin Core profile is provided for interoperability.

ERC (aka, Dublin Kernel): the Electronic Resource Citation (ERC) profile is the EZID UI default for ARKs. Metadata features developed for the ARK resolver are aimed at records stored with this format first.

Full DataCite Schema: when registering a DOI for a dataset, the DataCite Kernel is required as a minimum set of metadata. If a richer set of descriptive capability is desired, choose the full DataCite Schema, which is documented here: http://schema.datacite.org/. This must be done via the EZID API.

What is Harvesting and Indexing?

Your choice of on or off in the Harvesting/Indexing field pertains to making the metadata available for harvesting and/or indexing. This refers to inclusion in DataCite's Metadata Search store (MDS), which is accessible via an OAI-PMH interface, as well as EZID's metadata store. Third party indexers may access the metadata in these ways. If you choose "on," it does not guarantee that the metadata will be harvested or indexed, but if you choose "off," it removes the possibility. The default setting is "on."

Manage IDs

How to customize the Manage ID browse list view?

You can browse all identifiers that you have created by a browse list in the Manage ID section. You can customize this list with informational fields of your choice by clicking on the Customize view link. You may select up to 8 informational columns for the list view.

ID detail view

You can view detailed descriptive information about identifiers you have created. You'll also see a QR code for the URL version of the identifier. On this screen, you can edit and add to the information you have entered into EZID to describe the object.

Lookup IDs

Instructions on how to enter identifier string to return results.

In order to view the details about a known identifier, you must enter the complete string.

Demo

What is a demo identifier?

Anyone can try out the EZID functionality without an account by creating demo IDs. These identifiers are valid for 2 weeks and can be used to try out features of the EZID site. Demo identifiers are designated by yellow highlighting on the Create IDs and Manage IDs screens.