About Kaharagian Publication Numbers
A Kaharagian Publication Number is the permanent identifier of an official publication of the Principality. This page explains how to read one, how to cite the publication it names, and what happens when a number is looked up here.
What a Number Identifies
A number identifies a publication and its catalogue record. It does not identify a file, a web address or a copy. That distinction is the whole point of having a number at all: files are moved, re-issued and re-hosted, and a citation written against a file address stops working the first time any of that happens. A citation written against a number does not.
Numbers are assigned by the Office of the Sovereign's Printer. A number is assigned once and is never reassigned to a different publication, so a number in a footnote written today will still mean the same publication whenever it is read.
How to Read a Number
A number has thirteen digits, written in five groups. Taking 549-720-26-0001-8 as the example:
- 549
- The publisher. 549 is The Sovereign’s Printer, and is permanently assigned.
- 720
- The issuing authority: the Organ of State or other body responsible for the publication. Codes are drawn from blocks and are never reused for an unrelated body.
- 26
- The year of registration, as two digits.
- 0001
- The serial within that publisher, authority and year. Serials run in sequence and restart at 0001 each year. 0000 is never assigned.
- 8
- The check digit, which is calculated from the other twelve and never chosen.
The Check Digit
The check digit is a Modulus-10 figure. Each of the first twelve digits is multiplied by 1 or by 3 in alternation, with weight 1 falling on the leftmost digit; the products are summed; and the check digit is whatever brings that sum up to the next multiple of ten.
This is not the rule used by GTIN and EAN-13 barcodes, which weight from the right. The two rules agree for roughly four numbers in five and disagree for the rest, so a general-purpose barcode validator will accept most Kaharagian numbers and quietly reject a minority of perfectly valid ones. Anything checking these numbers should implement the rule above.
The check digit exists to catch a number that has been mistyped, misread from a printed page or transcribed from a damaged copy, before it resolves to the wrong publication.
Resolving a Number
Every number resolves at https://kpn.kaharagia.org/ followed by the number. The catalogue accepts a number written in any reasonable punctuation, including an unpunctuated run of thirteen digits, and redirects to the canonical form.
- A number that is registered and public returns its record.
- A number that is well formed but has no public record returns a page saying so, and nothing more. The catalogue does not distinguish between a number that has never been assigned and a record that is not published.
- A number that cannot be one, because it is the wrong length or its check digit does not agree with the rest, is refused with an explanation of the syntax.
How to Cite a Publication
Cite the catalogue record. Every record page carries a ready-made citation that can be selected and copied, and the same citation is available as CSL-JSON for reference managers.
The house form is:
Author. Title: Subtitle. Edition. Publisher, Year. KPN 549-720-26-0001-8. https://kpn.kaharagia.org/549-720-26-0001-8
No place of publication is given. Kaharagia is a non-territorial Principality and its Sovereign’s Printer has no imprint city, so a citation that supplied one would be stating something untrue in order to fill a slot.
Where a style requires an access date, add it in that style’s own form. The record itself does not change, so an access date records when a reader consulted it rather than which version they saw.
The Official File
Where a publication has an official PDF, the record page offers it for reading and for download, and states its size, extent and SHA-256 checksum. The checksum identifies those exact bytes.
A verified download is also offered. It recomputes the checksum of the file as it is served and refuses to send anything if the result does not match the register, rather than serving a file that is not the file the catalogue attests to.
Files are served by the catalogue itself. Readers are never redirected to storage, and a storage address is never a citable address.
Reading the Catalogue by Machine
Two read-only endpoints are published for each public record:
/api/v1/publications/{number}returns the catalogue record as JSON./api/v1/publications/{number}.cslreturns the citation as CSL-JSON.
Both accept a number in any accepted punctuation and both return only public records. A sitemap lists every public record page.
There is no write API. Publication metadata is edited in the register and nowhere else.
The Standard
The scheme is defined by its own Standard, which is itself a registered publication and is catalogued here like everything else: