Two organisations, ORCID and CrossRef, have collaborated to solve the problem of ambiguous author names in scholarly content. ORCID began assigning unique identifiers to researchers in October.

ORCID, was established in 2010 as non-profit organisation serving the research community. You may contact the Executive Director Laure Haak at l.haak@orcid.org and follow @ORCID_Org on Twitter.

On Monday 23rd April, 2012, a new International Standards Office (ISO) standard was authorised - ISO 26324:2012

DOI is an acronym for "digital object identifier".

The formal explanation from ISO is "specifies the syntax, description and resolution functional components of the digital object identifier system, and the general principles for the creation, registration and administration of DOI names.

In the most recent issue of D-Lib Magazine, Natasha Simons examines the growing culture of data citation around use of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) System. In discussing the recent collaboration between ANDS and DataCite to produce the Cite My Data Service, and the implementation of DOIs at Griffith University, she reveals the complexities and benefits of adopting DOIs for research data collections i