A blockchain based Trusted Persistent Identifier system for Big Data in Science

Abstract

A stable reference of Internet resources is crucial not only to identify a resource in a trustworthy and certified way but also to guarantee continuous access to it over time. The current practice in scientific publication as the use of a Persistent Identifier (PID) like a DOI or Handle, is becoming attractive also for the datasets. In fact, in the era of Big Data, the aspects of replicability and verification of the scientific result are paramount. In this paper we verify the functional feasibility of permissioned blockchain technology as a tool to implement a Trustworthy Persistent Identifier (T-PID) system for datasets in the scientific domain.