| author | title | date |
|---|---|---|
Jorrit Poelen https://jhpoelen.nl |
A DataVerse Beyond The Internet |
2024-02-06 |
- How do you cite data?
- How do you look up cited data now?
- How do you look up cited data 40 years from now?
Joshua Carp, 2014, "cat.jpg", CarpTest, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24358/N4FCVS, Harvard Dataverse, V1 ^[As suggested in https://dataverse.harvard.edu/file.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/24358/N4FCVS accessed on 2024-02-06 https://dataverse.org/best-practices/data-citation]
Like this?
curl -L "https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24358/N4FCVS"\
> cat.jpg
Wait a minute ...
cat cat.jpg
| head -n2
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
That ain't no cat, it is an HTML page.
Take 2.
- turn on the internet (still there?)
- open a web browser
- load https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24358/N4FCVS
- and rely on a delicate and complex socio-technical network
- inspect page
- use mouse to click on a link that looks like cat.jpg
- download image and trust its authenticity
Joshua Carp, 2014, "cat.jpg", CarpTest, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24358/N4FCVS, Harvard Dataverse, V1
Likely will not work due to intricate network of dependencies.
Proposal: Sign the citation ^[Elliott M.J., Poelen, J.H. & Fortes, J.A.B. (2023) Signing data citations enables data verification and citation persistence. Sci Data. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02230-y hash://sha256/f849c870565f608899f183ca261365dce9c9f1c5441b1c779e0db49df9c2a19d]
... by adding the digital fingerprint of the image.
Joshua Carp, 2014, "cat.jpg", CarpTest, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24358/N4FCVS, Harvard Dataverse, V1 hash://md5/7d62417b5b689ed91dcd25f10c9c2132
... by searching the world (in, and beyond, the internet) for the content with the unique fingerprint hash://md5/7d62417b5b689ed91dcd25f10c9c2132 .
- https://linker.bio/hash://md5/7d62417b5b689ed91dcd25f10c9c2132
- https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/harvard/?q=fileMd5%3A7d62417b5b689ed91dcd25f10c9c2132
preston cat --remote https://dataverse.harvard.edu hash://md5/7d62417b5b689ed91dcd25f10c9c2132preston cat --remote https://dataverse.org hash://md5/7d62417b5b689ed91dcd25f10c9c2132preston cat --remote https://linker.bio,https://dataverse.org hash://md5/7d62417b5b689ed91dcd25f10c9c2132
preston cat\
--remote "https://dataverse.org"\
hash://md5/7d62417b5b689ed91dcd25f10c9c2132\
> cat.jpg
- How do you cite data?
- How do you look up cited data now?
- How do you look up cited data 40 years from now?
The internet is a powerful tool for exchanging digital information. But the Internet’s contents changes constantly: websites are launched and taken down, webpages change, and content gets archived or lost.^[Jorrit Poelen. 2024. Unleashing Digital Knowledge Into The Future. Accessed on 2024-02-06 at https://linker.bio line:hash://sha256/8ac18eb75ff20d40d1d60bb6ad5a745eb528093d1ffbe373e3847c13146091eb!/L12]
By design, a web address, or Uniform Resource Locator (URL), points to a specific internet location from which a resource, like a webpage, can be retrieved. However, a URL does not provide a way to verify that a retrieved webpage was the one we asked for. ^[Jorrit Poelen. 2024. Unleashing Digital Knowledge Into The Future. Accessed on 2024-02-06 at https://linker.bio line:hash://sha256/8ac18eb75ff20d40d1d60bb6ad5a745eb528093d1ffbe373e3847c13146091eb!/L14]
Imagine using a URL-like reference to find a book at a library: instead of locating a book by what it is (e.g., title, author), you refer to a book by its location (e.g., third shelf on the second row next to the window). With this, a book becomes unfindable if moved to another shelf. And, if you do manage to find a book at the referenced location, how would you know you’ve found the book you are looking for? ^[Jorrit Poelen. 2024. Unleashing Digital Knowledge Into The Future. Accessed on 2024-02-06 at https://linker.bio line:hash://sha256/8ac18eb75ff20d40d1d60bb6ad5a745eb528093d1ffbe373e3847c13146091eb!/L16]
Instead of pointing to where books are located, librarians point to them using a bibliographic reference. For practical reasons, only a few identifying clues are included in such a reference (e.g., author, year of publication, title, and publisher). So, librarians refer to content by what it is, and knowing where it may be located is secondary. ^[Jorrit Poelen. 2024. Unleashing Digital Knowledge Into The Future. Accessed on 2024-02-06 at https://linker.bio line:hash://sha256/8ac18eb75ff20d40d1d60bb6ad5a745eb528093d1ffbe373e3847c13146091eb!/L18]
A bibliographic citation:
Darwin, C. 1859. On the Origin of Species. John Murray.