Organismid

Organismid is a generic term for a unique, persistent identifier assigned to an organism within a data management system to support reliable referencing and data integration. Such an identifier enables unambiguous linkage of records across studies, databases, and time, accommodating taxonomic revisions, strain distinctions, and sample provenance. In practice, organismid-like identifiers appear in many biological resources as stable keys that can be resolved to metadata such as scientific name, strain or lineage, collection data, sequencing status, and associated literature.

Key features typically expected of an organismid system include global uniqueness, persistence over the life of the dataset, and resolvability to machine-readable metadata. The scope may cover species, strains, culture collections, or specific samples, with governance rules and versioning to track updates. Organismid concepts underpin interoperability in genomics, ecology, clinical microbiology, and biodiversity informatics, where they support data integration, query capabilities, and reproducible analyses.

Challenges include taxonomic reclassification and changing synonyms, incomplete or inconsistent metadata, and the need for mappings between different organismid schemes. Ensuring robust governance, clear scope, and durable resolution services are important for long-term usefulness. Real-world data systems already use similar identifiers, such as NCBI Taxonomy IDs or other database accession numbers; organismid is the general idea of a dedicated, persistent organism identifier that enables cross-database referencing. See also taxonomy, accession number, persistent identifier.