Summary
NamesforLife© (N4L) was developed to solve a long-standing problem in biology: resolution of the ambiguity between nomenclature and biological objects and concepts.
Description
N4L Architecture makes names actionable. In a N4L enabled document or database, when encountering a name, the user clicks or mouses over it and a menu of authoritative information is displayed: an up-to-date historical record of both the name and taxon in its current and prior states and its synonyms; technical and non-technical papers in which the organism is a key subject; information about its availability from biological resource centers, databases holding molecular sequence data; and reliable information regarding its pathogenicity, utility, and safety requirements are made available.
N4L Architecture provides the necessary infrastructure to link end-users to the information they need, when they need it, even when the name or taxonomic concepts may have changed over time. Links from the point of need (e.g., the occurrence of a name in an electronic document) to related data are dynamically maintained in the background. The user has no need to formulate a search query at some external portal. The technology is designed to provide the underpinnings of a k2k system (knowledge-to-knowledge) for the research community and others seeking to have an organized, reliable and accurate nomenclature and ontology tracking tools.
By adopting DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) as the method of resolution, as opposed to other linking methods, information providers subscribing to services enabled by this technology can be confident that there will be multiple, stable, and persistent paths to end-users, and that their intellectual property rights will be protected. Scientific, technical and medical publishers have been early adopters of DOI technology and have reaped significant benefits from their implementation. In addition to increasing the visibility of their content online, DOIs have increased revenues and cut IT costs as DOIs significantly simplify link maintenance. Through the development of N4L Architecture, we are seeking to provide publishers with a completely new approach to bibliographic retrieval, based upon the use of nomenclature as a means of linking to content.
Contact Information
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Associations
NamesforLife©, LLC is a member of the International DOI Foundation.