The Common Science and Technology Resource Identifier("CSTR") is the world's unique persistent identifier to locating, accessing, and manipulating science and technology resources.

CSTR aims to promote the interconnection among various science and technology resources, to promote the openness and sharing of science and technology resources.

CSTR consists of four parts: Common Science and Technology Resource Identifier(CSTR), the registration agency code, type code and internal identifier. The internal identifier is used in the internal system, not including agency code and type code.The internal identifier includes digit, alphabet and ASCII character "-"(octet 0x2D), "."(octet 0x2E), "_" (octet 0x5F), "~"(octet 0x7E).

CSTR and the registration agency code are separated by the ASCII character ":" (octet 0x3A), and the rest of the parts are separated by the ASCII character "." (octet 0x2E). The structure of CSTR is shown in Figure 1.

CSTR provides the basis for the traceability, citation, statistics and evaluation of science and technology resources.

At present, CSTR provides identification services for more than 55 data repositories and science data centers, including Science Data Bank.

CSTR: https://www.cstr.cn/en/

CSTR in ScienceDB(example): https://www.scidb.cn/en/detail?dataSetId=829484098497019904