Digital Object Identifiers are clearly very helpful for data preservation and accessibility, but how do they make a difference for those who operate outside of digital repositories? Below, we present some examples of individual scenarios of people who can benefit from the use of DOIs.
Megan: Commercial Archaeologist
Megan studied field archaeology at university and has been working in the sector for several years. She is currently working as a site supervisor on an excavation in preparation for the development of a new hotel on the outskirts of town. Megan and her team have discovered the remains of a Roman-era domestic structure and have been busy collecting and documenting the artefacts and features uncovered on the site.
Megan has had a few ideas about the site while in the field, however, she needs to consult reports about similar sites and contexts in order to produce plausible interpretations. She found a report in the ADS Library of a site that had similarities to her own, and used it to gauge how likely her initial theories regarding Roman activity were accurate.
Fortunately, Megan is a responsible archaeologist and did not come to any final conclusions after reading only one report. She plugged the DOI prefix and suffix from that first report into DataCite Commons and retrieved a list of related studies that gave her additional insight into the nature of domestic Roman structures and objects in Britain.
Once Megan and her team completed their conclusions about the site, they deposited their data with the ADS. The ADS creates a DOI for every resource deposited with us, so all Megan had to do was provide some information about the project for the DOI metadata. Megan will occasionally search for her data in DataCite Commons to see how much traffic the results have seen and how they have contributed to later studies and the wider discourse of Roman archaeology. After seeing positive trends in views and usage due to the enhanced accessibility offered by DOIs, Megan is inclined to advise her company to continue depositing with the ADS.
Anne: University Researcher
Anne is a PhD candidate who is interested in Roman pottery within domestic contexts. She is currently managing the post-excavation operations of a Roman site that served as the university’s archaeological field school over the previous summer. She has spent the majority of her time identifying and analysing pot sherds.
Anne relies heavily on DOIs to find case studies and research on domestic Roman pottery. Recently, while searching for relevant DOIs, she stumbled upon the Roman site documented by Megan and her team. One of the artefacts recorded by Megan is almost identical to one of the sherds Anne has been examining, and Anne was interested to find that Megan had interpreted the object completely differently than she would have. Anne ultimately included both theories into her report of the pottery assemblage to communicate that the original purpose of the sherd is not certain. She makes sure to incorporate the DOIs from all of the studies she references (including Megan’s) in her citations to ensure that other researchers and reviewers can easily access and evaluate her sources.
As an academic, Anne is always on the hunt for additional funding to continue her research. Creating DOIs for her published articles allows her to track the usage of her research and cite the analytics in her grant applications as proof that her research is important and useful.
Tom: Heritage Society Member
Tom has been involved in his local heritage society for a few years and has lately been interested in recreating Roman customs. A fellow reenactor shared a blog post with him about Roman cooking methods which inspired him to try these methods out for himself. The blog post included a URL to an article about Roman cooking vessels, however, Tom was frustrated to find that the link was broken, so he was unable to access it.
Disappointed, Tom went to Google Scholar and searched for ‘Roman pottery.’ He eventually found Anne’s PhD thesis and took notes regarding her assessment on clay fabrics and vessel shapes most commonly used in cooking. Tom was also curious about Roman cooking spaces, and fortunately was able to access Megan’s study from the DOI listed in Anne’s bibliography.
Now that Tom had become somewhat of an expert on pottery in Roman Britain, he decided to host an event with his local heritage society on recreating Roman food. Individuals and families throughout the community attended and were given the opportunity to recreate Roman cooking vessels, witness reenactors cook and serve food, and experience what the Roman palette would have consisted of. Tom posted pictures and videos of the event on social media with the DOIs of every dataset he learned from in the comments. When Megan and Anne search for their data by inputting their DOIs into the DataCite API, they are now able to see Tom’s posts and how their data has enabled education and appreciation of the past in his community.
Final Thoughts
The scenarios above of Megan, Anne, and Tom illustrate the interconnected nature of research and knowledge dissemination facilitated by the use of DOIs. These personas demonstrate how DOIs benefit various stakeholders in the archaeological and heritage sectors by ensuring that content will always be findable and accessible. This means that it is easier to discover researchers and their associated organisations and for professionals and non-professionals alike to collaborate together in negotiating interpretations of the past.
DOIs serve as a crucial link in the chain of knowledge creation, preservation, and dissemination. They not only benefit researchers and academics but also contribute to public engagement by helping to circulate findings from historical and archaeological research, thereby creating a more interconnected and informed community of practice.
