Ars’ science staff loves the Digital Object Identifier system that’s used for scientific publications. Each paper gets its own unique ID, and plugging that into the doi.org site will resolve it to the paper, even if the original journal changes its name, moves the paper to a new URL, or what have you. Aside from helping find an original research paper, the DOI is powerful as a tool for finding related information. A simple search for a DOI can identify a whole host of articles that comment on the paper.
If it’s useful for papers, imagine what a DOI for authors could do. Authors have a far more complex history that papers. I’ve published while affiliated with three different institutions, my name appears with and without the middle initial, and there is at least one other Timmer, J.R. doing biology research out there—and I have a relatively rare last name and short publication history. Having a functional author ID system could help with everything from datamining the scientific literature to identifying the role of social networks in science. Unfortunately, it’s such an obvious thing to do, that multiple, competing initiatives are forming.
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