Commenting on “Digital Object” Aspects

The concept of Digital Objects (DO) goes back to discussions raised by Kahn & Wilensky in 1995 which shortly afterwards was over-shadowed by the discussions about and implementations of the very successful World Wide Web. The concept of Digital Object was put back on the agenda by the discussions within the Data Foundation & Terminology group, which published a Core Data Model in 2014 using the input from Kahn and many use cases from different scientific communities. Since that time much has happened within different initiatives and organizations such as RDA, CNRI, DONA, CODATA, BRDI, GOFAIR, expert groups initiated by funders such as the European Commission, and many others. In this paper we explain the small differences between the definitions being used in the above mentioned initiatives and put forth suggestions for future consideration. The recent publication of the DO Interface Protocol v2.0 represents a significant milestone in the increasingly active discussions and events referenced above and it reflects the ongoing intensive discussions. These resulted in sharpening our minds about the concepts and components essential for building DO-based infrastructures. Necessarily, some of the concept and term definitions have been subject of changes. This note is intended to clarify these differences and to address a few open questions about Digital Objects.