Digital object identifier
Encyclopedia
A digital object identifier (DOI) is a character string (a "digital identifier") used to uniquely identify an object such as an electronic document
. Metadata
about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata may change. Referring to an online document by its DOI provides more stable linking than simply referring to it by its URL, because if its URL changes, the publisher need only update the metadata for the DOI to link to the new URL.
However, the DOI system is not open to all comers; only organizations that can meet the contractual obligations of the DOI system and that are willing to pay to become a member of the system can assign DOIs. The DOI system is implemented through a federation of registration agencies coordinated by the International DOI Foundation, which developed and controls the system. The DOI system has been developed and implemented in a range of publishing applications since 2000; by late April 2011 more than 50 million DOI names had been assigned by some 4,000 organizations. The DOI System is part of the larger Handle System
.
characters are allowed in these strings, which are interpreted in a case-insensitive manner.
For example, in the DOI namehttp://dx.doi.org/ " to the DOI name, omitting its "doi:" prefix; e.g., the DOI name doi:10.1000/182 is linked as http://dx.doi.org/10.1000/182 . This URL provides the location of an HTTP proxy server which will redirect web accesses to the correct online location of the linked item.
DOI names can identify creative works (such as texts, images, audio or video items, and software) in both electronic and physical forms, performance
s, and abstract works such as licenses, parties to a transaction, etc.
The names can refer to objects at varying levels of detail: thus DOI names can identify a journal, an individual issue of a journal, an individual article in the journal, or a single table in that article. The choice of level of detail is left to the assigner, but in the DOI system it must be declared as part of the metadata that is associated to a DOI name, using a data dictionary based on the indecs Content Model
.
In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
's publication service SourceOECD
, each table or graph in an OECD publication is shown with a DOI name that leads to an Excel file of data underlying the tables and graphs. Further development of such services is planned.
A multilingual European DOI registration agency activity, mEDRA, and a Chinese registration agency, Wanfang Data, are active in non-English language markets. Expansion to other sectors is planned by the International DOI Foundation.
with objects, allowing it to provide users with relevant pieces of information about the objects and their relationships. Included as part of this metadata are network actions that allow DOI names to be resolved to web locations where the objects they describe can be found. To achieve its goals, the DOI system combines the Handle System
and the indecs Content Model
with a social infrastructure.
The Handle System ensures that the DOI name for an object is not based on any changeable attributes of the object such as its physical location or ownership, that the attributes of the object are encoded in its metadata rather than in its DOI name, and that no two objects are assigned the same DOI name. Because DOI names are short character strings, they are human-readable, may be copied and pasted as text, and fit into the URI
specification. The DOI name resolution mechanism acts behind the scenes, so that users communicate with it in the same way as with any other web service; it is built on open architecture
s, incorporates trust mechanisms
, and is engineered to operate reliably and flexibly so that it can be adapted to changing demands and new applications of the DOI system. DOI name resolution may be used with OpenURL
to select the most appropriate among multiple locations for a given object, according to the location of the user making the request. However, despite this ability, the DOI system has drawn criticism from librarians for directing users to non-free copies of documents that would have been available for no additional fee from alternative locations.
The indecs Content Model is used within the DOI system to associate metadata with objects. A small kernel of common metadata is shared by all DOI names and can be optionally extended with other relevant data, which may be public or restricted. Registrants may update the metadata for their DOI names at any time, such as when publication information changes or when an object moves to a different URL.
The International DOI Foundation (IDF) oversees the integration of these technologies and operation of the system through a technical and social infrastructure. The social infrastructure of a federation of independent registration agencies offering DOI services was modelled on existing successful federated deployments of identifiers such as GS1
and ISBN.
(URL), in that it identifies an object as a first-class entity, not simply the place where the object is located. It implements the Uniform Resource Identifier
(Uniform Resource Name
) concept and adds to it a data model and social infrastructure.
A DOI name also differs from standard identifier registries such as the ISBN
, ISRC
, etc. The purpose of an identifier registry is to manage a given collection of identifiers, whereas the primary purpose of the DOI system is to make a collection of identifiers actionable and interoperable, where that collection can include identifiers from many other controlled collections.
The DOI system offers persistent, semantically interoperable resolution to related current data, and is best suited to material that will be used in services outside the direct control of the issuing assigner (e.g., public citation, or managing content of value). It uses a managed registry (providing social and technical infrastructure). It does not assume any specific business model for the provision of identifiers or services, and enables other existing services to link to it in defined ways. Several approaches for making identifiers persistent have been proposed. The comparison of persistent identifier approaches is difficult because they are not all doing the same thing. Imprecisely referring to a set of schemes as "identifiers" doesn't mean that they can be compared easily. Other "identifier systems" may be enabling technologies with low barriers to entry, providing an easy to use labeling mechanism that allows anyone to set up a new instance (examples include Persistent Uniform Resource Locator
(PURL), URLs, Globally Unique Identifier
s (GUIDs), etc.), but may lack some of the functionality of a registry-controlled scheme and will usually lack accompanying metadata in a controlled scheme. The DOI system does not have this approach and should not be compared directly to such identifier schemes. Various applications using such enabling technologies with added features have been devised that meet some of the features offered by the DOI system for specific sectors (e.g., ARK
).
A DOI name does not depend on the object's location and, in this way, is similar to a Uniform Resource Name (URN) or PURL but differs from an ordinary URL. URLs are often used as substitute identifiers for documents on the Internet (better characterised as Uniform Resource Identifiers) although the same document at two different locations has two URLs. By contrast, persistent identifiers such as DOI names identify objects as first class entities: two instances of the same object would have the same DOI name.
, developed by Corporation for National Research Initiatives
, and is freely available to any user encountering a DOI name. Resolution redirects the user from a DOI name to one or more pieces of typed data: URLs representing instances of the object, services such as e-mail, or one or more items of metadata. To the Handle System, a DOI name is a handle, and so has a set of values assigned to it and may be thought of as a record that consists of a group of fields. Each handle value must have a data type specified in its "" field, that defines the syntax and semantics of its data.
To resolve a DOI name, it may be input to a DOI resolver (e.g., at www.doi.org) or may be represented as an HTTP string by preceding the DOI name by the string
For example, the DOI name 10.1000/182 can be resolved at the address "http://dx.doi.org/10.1000/182 ". Web pages or other hypertext documents can include hypertext links in this form. Some browsers allow the direct resolution of a DOI (or other handles) with an add-on, e.g., CNRI Handle Extension for Firefox. The CNRI Handle Extension for Firefox enables the browser to access handle or DOI URIs like hdl:4263537/4000 or doi:10.1000/1 using the native Handle System protocol. It will even replace references to web-to-handle proxy servers with native resolution.
relating to the DOI system, manages common operational features, and supports the development and promotion of the DOI system. The IDF ensures that any improvements made to the DOI system (including creation, maintenance, registration, resolution and policymaking of DOI names) are available to any DOI registrant. It also prevents third parties from imposing additional licensing requirements beyond those of the IDF on users of the DOI system.
The IDF is controlled by a Board elected by the members of the Foundation, with an appointed Managing Agent who is responsible for co-ordinating and planning its activities. Membership is open to all organizations with an interest in electronic publishing and related enabling technologies. The IDF holds annual open meetings on the topics of DOI and related issues: the 2010 meeting is provisionally scheduled to be held in Hannover, Germany in mid year.
Registration agencies, appointed by the IDF, provide services to DOI registrants: they allocate DOI prefixes, register DOI names, and provide the necessary infrastructure to allow registrants to declare and maintain metadata and state data. Registration agencies are also expected to actively promote the widespread adoption of the DOI system, to cooperate with the IDF in the development of the DOI system as a whole, and to provide services on behalf of their specific user community. A list of current RAs is maintained by the International DOI Foundation.
Registration agencies generally charge a fee to assign a new DOI name; parts of these fees are used to support the IDF. The DOI system overall, through the IDF, operates on a not-for-profit cost recovery basis.
DOI is a registered URI under the infoURI specification (IETF RFC4452), "The "info" URI Scheme for Information Assets with Identifiers in Public Namespaces". info:doi/ is the infoURI Namespace of Digital Object Identifiers.
The DOI syntax is a NISO standard, first standardised in 2000, ANSI/NISO Z39.84-2005 Syntax for the Digital Object Identifier.
Electronic document
An electronic document is any electronic media content that are intended to be used in either an electronic form or as printed output....
. Metadata
Metadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document is permanent, whereas its location and other metadata may change. Referring to an online document by its DOI provides more stable linking than simply referring to it by its URL, because if its URL changes, the publisher need only update the metadata for the DOI to link to the new URL.
However, the DOI system is not open to all comers; only organizations that can meet the contractual obligations of the DOI system and that are willing to pay to become a member of the system can assign DOIs. The DOI system is implemented through a federation of registration agencies coordinated by the International DOI Foundation, which developed and controls the system. The DOI system has been developed and implemented in a range of publishing applications since 2000; by late April 2011 more than 50 million DOI names had been assigned by some 4,000 organizations. The DOI System is part of the larger Handle System
Handle System
The Handle System is a technology specification for assigning, managing, and resolving persistent identifiers for digital objects and other resources on the Internet...
.
DOI names
A DOI name takes the form of a character string divided into two parts – a prefix and a suffix – separated by a forward slash. The prefix identifies the registrant of the name, and the suffix is chosen by the registrant and identifies the specific object associated with that DOI. Most legal UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
characters are allowed in these strings, which are interpreted in a case-insensitive manner.
For example, in the DOI name
10.1000/182, the prefix is 10.1000 and the suffix is 182. The "10." part of the prefix identifies the DOI registry, and the characters 1000 in the prefix identify the registrant; in this case the registrant is the International DOI Foundation itself. 182 is the suffix, or item ID, identifying a single object (in this case, the latest version of the DOI Handbook). Citations using DOI names should be printed as doi:10.1000/182. When the citation is a hypertext link, it is recommended to embed the link as a URL by concatenating "DOI names can identify creative works (such as texts, images, audio or video items, and software) in both electronic and physical forms, performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
s, and abstract works such as licenses, parties to a transaction, etc.
The names can refer to objects at varying levels of detail: thus DOI names can identify a journal, an individual issue of a journal, an individual article in the journal, or a single table in that article. The choice of level of detail is left to the assigner, but in the DOI system it must be declared as part of the metadata that is associated to a DOI name, using a data dictionary based on the indecs Content Model
Indecs Content Model
- indecs project : was a project part funded by the European Community Info 2000 initiative and by several organisations representing the music, rights, text publishing, authors, library and other sectors in 1998-2000, which has since been used in a number of metadata activities...
.
Applications
Major applications of the DOI system currently include:- persistent citationCitationBroadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source . More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated...
s in scholarly materials (journal articles, books, etc.) through CrossRefCrossRefCrossRef is an official Digital Object Identifier Registration Agency of the International DOI Foundation. It was launched in early 2000 as a cooperative effort among publishers to enable persistent cross-publisher citation linking in online academic journals.-Background:CrossRef has who...
, a consortium of around 3,000 publishers; - scientific data sets through DataCiteDataCiteDataCite is an international consortium which aims to:*establish easier access to scientific research data on the Internet, to*increase acceptance of research data as legitimate, citable contributions to the scientific record, and to...
, a consortium of leading research libraries, technical information providers, and scientific data centers; - European UnionEuropean UnionThe European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
official publications through the EU publications officePublications Office (European Union)The Publications Office of the European Union is an interinstitutional office whose task is to publish the publications of the institutions of the European Communities and the European Union ....
.
In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an international economic organisation of 34 countries founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade...
's publication service SourceOECD
SourceOECD
SourceOECD was the online library of the OECD from 2001-2010. In July 2010 it was replaced by OECD iLibrary .-OECD publications:The OECD publishes roughly 250 books a year, on subjects as diverse as general economy, statistics, agriculture, science, future studies or environment...
, each table or graph in an OECD publication is shown with a DOI name that leads to an Excel file of data underlying the tables and graphs. Further development of such services is planned.
A multilingual European DOI registration agency activity, mEDRA, and a Chinese registration agency, Wanfang Data, are active in non-English language markets. Expansion to other sectors is planned by the International DOI Foundation.
Features and benefits
The DOI system was designed to provide a form of persistent identification, in which each DOI name unequivocally and permanently identifies the object to which it is associated. And, it associates metadataMetadata
The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...
with objects, allowing it to provide users with relevant pieces of information about the objects and their relationships. Included as part of this metadata are network actions that allow DOI names to be resolved to web locations where the objects they describe can be found. To achieve its goals, the DOI system combines the Handle System
Handle System
The Handle System is a technology specification for assigning, managing, and resolving persistent identifiers for digital objects and other resources on the Internet...
and the indecs Content Model
Indecs Content Model
- indecs project : was a project part funded by the European Community Info 2000 initiative and by several organisations representing the music, rights, text publishing, authors, library and other sectors in 1998-2000, which has since been used in a number of metadata activities...
with a social infrastructure.
The Handle System ensures that the DOI name for an object is not based on any changeable attributes of the object such as its physical location or ownership, that the attributes of the object are encoded in its metadata rather than in its DOI name, and that no two objects are assigned the same DOI name. Because DOI names are short character strings, they are human-readable, may be copied and pasted as text, and fit into the URI
Uniform Resource Identifier
In computing, a uniform resource identifier is a string of characters used to identify a name or a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network using specific protocols...
specification. The DOI name resolution mechanism acts behind the scenes, so that users communicate with it in the same way as with any other web service; it is built on open architecture
Open architecture
Open architecture is a type of computer architecture or software architecture that allows adding, upgrading and swapping components. For example, the IBM PC and Apple IIe have an open architecture, whereas the Apple IIc and Amiga 500 computers have a closed architecture...
s, incorporates trust mechanisms
Computational trust
In Information security, computational trust is the generation of trusted authorities or user trust through cryptography. In centralised systems, security is typically based on the authenticated identity of external parties...
, and is engineered to operate reliably and flexibly so that it can be adapted to changing demands and new applications of the DOI system. DOI name resolution may be used with OpenURL
OpenURL
OpenURL is a standardized format of Uniform Resource Locator intended to enable Internet users to more easily find a copy of a resource that they are allowed to access...
to select the most appropriate among multiple locations for a given object, according to the location of the user making the request. However, despite this ability, the DOI system has drawn criticism from librarians for directing users to non-free copies of documents that would have been available for no additional fee from alternative locations.
The indecs Content Model is used within the DOI system to associate metadata with objects. A small kernel of common metadata is shared by all DOI names and can be optionally extended with other relevant data, which may be public or restricted. Registrants may update the metadata for their DOI names at any time, such as when publication information changes or when an object moves to a different URL.
The International DOI Foundation (IDF) oversees the integration of these technologies and operation of the system through a technical and social infrastructure. The social infrastructure of a federation of independent registration agencies offering DOI services was modelled on existing successful federated deployments of identifiers such as GS1
GS1
Founded in 1977, GS1 is an international not-for-profit association dedicated to the development and implementation of global standards and solutions to improve the efficiency and visibility of supply and demand chains globally and across multiple sectors...
and ISBN.
Comparison with other identifier schemes
A DOI name differs from commonly used Internet pointers to material, such as the Uniform Resource LocatorUniform Resource Locator
In computing, a uniform resource locator or universal resource locator is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to an Internet resource....
(URL), in that it identifies an object as a first-class entity, not simply the place where the object is located. It implements the Uniform Resource Identifier
Uniform Resource Identifier
In computing, a uniform resource identifier is a string of characters used to identify a name or a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network using specific protocols...
(Uniform Resource Name
Uniform Resource Name
A uniform resource name is a uniform resource identifier that uses the urn scheme and does not imply availability of the identified resource. Both URNs and URLs are URIs, and a particular URI may be a name and a locator at the same time.The functional requirements for uniform resource names are...
) concept and adds to it a data model and social infrastructure.
A DOI name also differs from standard identifier registries such as the ISBN
International Standard Book Number
The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering code created by Gordon Foster, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H...
, ISRC
International Standard Recording Code
The International Standard Recording Code , defined by ISO 3901, is an international standard code for uniquely identifying sound recordings and music video recordings. IFPI has been appointed by ISO as registration authority for this standard. The ISO technical committee 46, subcommittee 9 is...
, etc. The purpose of an identifier registry is to manage a given collection of identifiers, whereas the primary purpose of the DOI system is to make a collection of identifiers actionable and interoperable, where that collection can include identifiers from many other controlled collections.
The DOI system offers persistent, semantically interoperable resolution to related current data, and is best suited to material that will be used in services outside the direct control of the issuing assigner (e.g., public citation, or managing content of value). It uses a managed registry (providing social and technical infrastructure). It does not assume any specific business model for the provision of identifiers or services, and enables other existing services to link to it in defined ways. Several approaches for making identifiers persistent have been proposed. The comparison of persistent identifier approaches is difficult because they are not all doing the same thing. Imprecisely referring to a set of schemes as "identifiers" doesn't mean that they can be compared easily. Other "identifier systems" may be enabling technologies with low barriers to entry, providing an easy to use labeling mechanism that allows anyone to set up a new instance (examples include Persistent Uniform Resource Locator
Persistent Uniform Resource Locator
A persistent uniform resource locator is a Uniform Resource Locator that is used to redirect to the location of the requested Web resource. PURLs redirect HTTP clients using HTTP status codes...
(PURL), URLs, Globally Unique Identifier
Globally Unique Identifier
A globally unique identifier is a unique reference number used as an identifier in computer software. The term GUID also is used for Microsoft's implementation of the Universally unique identifier standard....
s (GUIDs), etc.), but may lack some of the functionality of a registry-controlled scheme and will usually lack accompanying metadata in a controlled scheme. The DOI system does not have this approach and should not be compared directly to such identifier schemes. Various applications using such enabling technologies with added features have been devised that meet some of the features offered by the DOI system for specific sectors (e.g., ARK
Archival Resource Key
Archival Resource Key is a Uniform Resource Locator that provides a multi-purpose identifier given to information objects of any type...
).
A DOI name does not depend on the object's location and, in this way, is similar to a Uniform Resource Name (URN) or PURL but differs from an ordinary URL. URLs are often used as substitute identifiers for documents on the Internet (better characterised as Uniform Resource Identifiers) although the same document at two different locations has two URLs. By contrast, persistent identifiers such as DOI names identify objects as first class entities: two instances of the same object would have the same DOI name.
Resolution
DOI name resolution is provided through the Handle SystemHandle System
The Handle System is a technology specification for assigning, managing, and resolving persistent identifiers for digital objects and other resources on the Internet...
, developed by Corporation for National Research Initiatives
Corporation for National Research Initiatives
The Corporation for National Research Initiatives , based in Reston, Virginia, is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 by Robert E. Kahn as an "activities center around strategic development of network-based information technologies", including the National Information Infrastructure in the...
, and is freely available to any user encountering a DOI name. Resolution redirects the user from a DOI name to one or more pieces of typed data: URLs representing instances of the object, services such as e-mail, or one or more items of metadata. To the Handle System, a DOI name is a handle, and so has a set of values assigned to it and may be thought of as a record that consists of a group of fields. Each handle value must have a data type specified in its "
To resolve a DOI name, it may be input to a DOI resolver (e.g., at www.doi.org) or may be represented as an HTTP string by preceding the DOI name by the string
http://dx.doi.org/
For example, the DOI name 10.1000/182 can be resolved at the address "
Organizational structure
The International DOI Foundation (IDF), a non-profit organisation created in 1998, is the governance body of the DOI system. It safeguards all intellectual property rightsIntellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
relating to the DOI system, manages common operational features, and supports the development and promotion of the DOI system. The IDF ensures that any improvements made to the DOI system (including creation, maintenance, registration, resolution and policymaking of DOI names) are available to any DOI registrant. It also prevents third parties from imposing additional licensing requirements beyond those of the IDF on users of the DOI system.
The IDF is controlled by a Board elected by the members of the Foundation, with an appointed Managing Agent who is responsible for co-ordinating and planning its activities. Membership is open to all organizations with an interest in electronic publishing and related enabling technologies. The IDF holds annual open meetings on the topics of DOI and related issues: the 2010 meeting is provisionally scheduled to be held in Hannover, Germany in mid year.
Registration agencies, appointed by the IDF, provide services to DOI registrants: they allocate DOI prefixes, register DOI names, and provide the necessary infrastructure to allow registrants to declare and maintain metadata and state data. Registration agencies are also expected to actively promote the widespread adoption of the DOI system, to cooperate with the IDF in the development of the DOI system as a whole, and to provide services on behalf of their specific user community. A list of current RAs is maintained by the International DOI Foundation.
Registration agencies generally charge a fee to assign a new DOI name; parts of these fees are used to support the IDF. The DOI system overall, through the IDF, operates on a not-for-profit cost recovery basis.
Standardization
The DOI system is currently being standardised through the International Organization for Standardization, in its technical committee on identification and description TC46/SC9. The Draft International Standard ISO/DIS 26324, Information and documentation - Digital Object Identifier System met the ISO requirements for approval. The relevant ISO Working Group had later submitted an edited version to ISO for distribution as an FDIS (Final Draft International Standard) ballot, which was approved by 100% of those voting in a ballot closing on November 15, 2010.DOI is a registered URI under the infoURI specification (IETF RFC4452), "The "info" URI Scheme for Information Assets with Identifiers in Public Namespaces". info:doi/ is the infoURI Namespace of Digital Object Identifiers.
The DOI syntax is a NISO standard, first standardised in 2000, ANSI/NISO Z39.84-2005 Syntax for the Digital Object Identifier.
See also
- Digital identityDigital identityDigital identity is the aspect of digital technology that is concerned with the mediation of people's experience of their own identity and the identity of other people and things...
- Object identifierObject identifierIn computing, an object identifier or OID is an identifier used to name an object . Structurally, an OID consists of a node in a hierarchically-assigned namespace, formally defined using the ITU-T's ASN.1 standard. Successive numbers of the nodes, starting at the root of the tree, identify each...
- Universally Unique IdentifierUniversally Unique IdentifierA universally unique identifier is an identifier standard used in software construction, standardized by the Open Software Foundation as part of the Distributed Computing Environment ....
(UUID) - Metadata standardsMetadata standardsMetadata standards are requirements which are intended to establish a common understanding of the meaning or semantics of the data, to ensure correct and proper use and interpretation of the data by its owners and users...
- Publisher Item IdentifierPublisher Item IdentifierThe Publisher Item Identifier is a unique identifier used by a number of scientific journal publishers to identify documents . It uses the pre-existing ISSN or ISBN of the publication in question, and adds a character for source publication type, an item number, and a check digit.The system was...
(PII) - PermalinkPermalinkA permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog or forum entry after it has passed from the front page to the archives. Because a permalink remains unchanged indefinitely, it is less susceptible to link rot. Most modern weblogging and content-syndication software systems support such links...
- Persistent Uniform Resource LocatorPersistent Uniform Resource LocatorA persistent uniform resource locator is a Uniform Resource Locator that is used to redirect to the location of the requested Web resource. PURLs redirect HTTP clients using HTTP status codes...