This paper describes research around Identifier Services
(IDS). IDS is designed to bind dispersed data objects and verify aspects of
their identity and integrity, independent of where the data are located and
whether they are duplicate, partial, private, published, active, or static. IDS
will allow individuals and repositories to manage, track, and preserve different
types of identifiers and their associated data and metadata. The IDS data model
which focuses on research processes and the relationship between their data
inputs and outputs will significantly improve provenance metadata of distributed
collections at any point of their lifecycle