Abstract:
Scientific contributions should be permanent and immutable, as accidential or deliberate modification or deletion of previously published results can undermine the whole system. For example, if a scientist is citing a particular result as supporting evidence, he or she wants to be sure that the cited facts are not changed afterwards. For that reason, I propose that entities such as nanopublications should be identified by URIs that contain a cryptographic hash value that can be used to verify the integrity and original state of the resource.
Preprint article available
This approach is described in an article that is now available as a preprint: http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.5775
Cheers,
Tobias
Hash-URIs are now called “Trusty URIs”
https://www.force11.org/trusty-uris-verifiable-immutable-and-permanent-digital-artifacts-for-linked-data/