dARK

a decentralized blockchain implementation of ARK Persistent Identifiers

Abstract

We present the first proof of concept of a technology that could be the basis for a decentralized, low-cost service for assigning/resolving persistent ARK identifiers. This is the basis for an open, community-driven project promoted by IBICT (Brazil) and LA Referencia/RedCLARA with the long-term goal of providing an open/non-centralized persistent unique/duplicate identifier factory and resolution service for the global Open Science ecosystem based on permissioned public blockchain technology. Some of the motivations for this work are: (i) The need for not only persistent, but unique/deduplicated identifiers in order to build better research graphs, indicators and research evaluation data; (ii) Lack of coverage of PIDs in repositories of the Global South mainly due to the costs that these services represent for institutions; and (iii) Most persistent identifier systems are based on centralized models, depending on a few agencies that support the service infrastructure. The ARK identifier has emerged as a viable alternative low-cost solution due to the possibility of implementing internal providers for the global resolver. dARK is an ARK implementation based on institutional blockchain nodes, the data is owned, stored and controlled in a distributed manner by all the organizations maintaining the network, without the need for intensive use of computing resources.