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dARK: persistent identifiers as a regional public good.
LA Referencia promotes open infrastructure to assign ARK identifiers, preserve their metadata, and maintain public resolution. The project’s goal is for institutions in the region to sustain the service jointly, without relying on a central commercial entity.
The challenge
Location can change. Identity must remain.
Research outputs move between servers, platforms, or web addresses. A persistent identifier keeps a stable reference and allows the destination to be updated without replacing the identity.
The sustainability and coverage of identifiers vary across countries, institutions, and types of research output.
ARK does not replace DOI: it helps extend coverage to outputs that do not have a persistent identifier.
Source: Matas, Mora Campos, Barrere y Cetrangolo (2023) ↗. The percentage describes the dataset analysed in that study, not a real-time measurement.
What is ARK
A persistent identity, separate from its current location.
ARK is an open persistent identifier scheme. In ark:/12345/abc123, the NAAN identifies the assigning authority and the name identifies the resource within that space. The institution associated with the NAAN takes responsibility for maintaining resolution.
Why ARK: it lets institutions manage their identification space and combine local resolution with global services. Its persistence depends on sustained institutional commitment, not only on identifier syntax.
More information: ARK Alliance · arks.org ↗.
What dARK offers
Identify, preserve, and resolve from regional infrastructure.
dARK organizes functions that participating institutions can integrate with their systems and that people can use through public resolution.
Minter reserves and publishes ARKs for participating nodes and institutions in the network.
The destination can be updated without changing the identifier.
The publication process incorporates and preserves normalized metadata and the original record.
Resolver provides the public with the current destination and information associated with the identifier.
From the Brazilian precedent to the regional project
An initial experience that is now being expanded and developed.
dARK began as a joint project of IBICT—the Brazilian Institute of Scientific and Technological Information—with LA Referencia’s support. The first phase received funding from IBICT and later from SCOSS.
dARK 1.0 made it possible to assign and resolve ARKs from Oasisbr. The aggregator identified eligible records, requested ARKs, and returned them to repositories; it did not yet incorporate decentralized metadata preservation.
The current project extends that precedent with regional infrastructure, increased replication, and metadata preservation. dARK 1.0 will progressively migrate and extend towards this model.
The site dark-pid.net ↗ documents the dARK 1.0 precedent. Its architecture should not be interpreted as the current version.
Decentralized model
Nodes in different places, one consistent infrastructure.
dARK is designed as a network with nodes and servers in different institutions that responds as a unified service. Blockchain and IPFS, used as private networks, maintain record consistency and metadata replication across those nodes.
Project horizon: gradually build a highly available service that can be sustained through changes in infrastructure, institutions, or national contexts. B2 explains how these technologies are implemented and their technical status.
Regional governance
Technology decentralizes implementation; the region assumes institutional responsibility.
dARK is not an uncontrolled service. LA Referencia, its national nodes, and participating institutions provide the institutional framework that makes it possible to assign, maintain, and resolve identifiers as a regional public good.
Institutions linked to the network manage their NAANs and corresponding identifiers.
Implementation can distribute services and copies across sites without turning technology into an independent authority.
Regional collaboration combines code, infrastructure, and institutional commitment to sustain the service over time.