Identifiers for the 21st century: How to design, provision, and reuse persistent identifiers to maximize utility and impact of life science data

In many disciplines, data are highly decentralized across thousands of online databases (repositories, registries, and knowledgebases). A group of US scholars outline 10 lessons they have learned about the identifier qualities and best practices that facilitate large-scale data integration. Specifically, they propose actions that identifier practitioners (database providers) should take in the design, provision and reuse of identifiers.