Defining RA and Registrant Policies > Defining a Prefix Allocation Policy

As a Registration Agency (RA), you may choose to assign prefixes to your customers (see DOI Namespace Allocation Approach). To do so, you should define a prefix allocation policy.

The DOI Foundation allots to each RA prefixes as a block of sequential numbers that have no special meaning (prefixes are created by the DOI technical support service provider). No reserved prefixes may be requested.

Some RAs will manage all assignments themselves and can operate under a single prefix. Others will want to delegate assignment to customers and in this case, it is recommended that prefixes are assigned at an appropriate level to deal with business requirements. Typically, a Registration Agency (RA) may issue one prefix per customer, but it might also be appropriate to issue a prefix per brand, or to some recognizable cluster of products (for example, a publisher imprint). The choice is the RA's, but the DOI Foundation and/or other RAs can discuss requirements and make recommendations.

NOTE In case DOI names must be transferred from one RA to another, the foremost technical issue in this transfer is the one-to-one relation of prefix to Local Handle Service (LHS). In this perspective, RAs should allocate at least one separate prefix for each customer, and where appropriate more than one, since the fundamental constraint is that all DOI names under a given prefix must reside in the same LHS (this general architecture is a logical and efficient approach to a distributed service and is far from unique to the Handle System).