Scenarios for using the ANDS Identify My Data service

Some scenarios:

1. You have a dataset on your desktop that you intend to submit to a data centre in the future but you would like to refer to it right now in a journal article you are writing.  You use the Identify My Data services to allocate an identifier and include that “clickable” reference in your draft.  When the article is published people start referring to your data in other articles using the persistent identifier.  When you move the dataset, you visit the ANDS service again to update the location details, and you don’t have to correct every reference to it in the literature.
2. You are part of a national cross disciplinary collaborative research centre on alpine regions.  The centre is creating a loose data federation that queries and harvests metadata from your database.  You maintain the database on your Departmental web server, but you intend to change jobs and move to another university next year. You use the Identify My Data services to allocate an identifier and circulate that clickable address to your colleagues and to the “machinery” of the data federation.  When you move and take the data with you, you visit the ANDS service again to update the location details, and you don’t have to update all the references to it throughout your federation.
3. You are data services manager at the Department of Primary Industries and you publish environmental observations which research communities use nationally.  An election is in the offing and reliable sources indicate that your department will be merged with the department of tourism to form a new a new department with a new name and a new website and URL location. You use the Identify My Data services to allocate an identifier and circulate that clickable address to major users of the datasets.  When the merger happens and the new address is available, you visit the ANDS service again to update the location details, and there is no interruption of access to your data and you don’t have to contact every registered user.

There are some scenarios where using the ANDS Identify My Data services would not be appropriate.   For example purely internal system identifiers are not within the scope of this service.

More Information:

Identify My Data - Overview

Machine2Machine Identifiers

Getting an Account