I tried to picture the extended specimen concept and digital specimen concept for comparison. Both concepts seem to have a lot in common, but the DS concept focused more on the technical implementation and provenance data while the ES concept focused more on the types of extension and how to add to the value of the physical specimen. So they rather complement each other than are different. They both share a common vision of linking through PIDs and to extend specimen both with data that can be linked to a specimen directly and data that can be linked through a taxonomic name or gathering event. They both have the vision that current domain standards (DwC, ABCD) need to be used as basis but would need to be extended. There are some differences in the original concepts though
- ES has specimen media in its primary extension while DS has only specimen images in its authoritative section, placing other specimen media in the extended data (e.g. a sound recording taken during the gathering).
- ES links all data directly to the physical specimen. This would require current physical specimen identifiers to change to a globally unique one if they are not so already. DS links all data to the digital specimen and uses a new DS identifier for that. It tries to establish a link to the physical specimen based on a current, not always globally unique physical specimen identifier (accession number) plus some other data (e.g. a collection identifier).
-DS aims to use an identifier (handle, DOI) that enables multiple resolution, e.g. the PID can link to a landing page hosted by an institution, a page in GBIF, and other places. ES did not work out this level of technical detail. Similar for DS aiming to implement machine actionable metadata through a FAIR Digital Objects and a PID information Types (PIT).