This paper describes research around Identifier Services (IDS). IDS is designed to bind dispersed data objects and verify aspects of their identity and integrity, independent of where the data are located and whether they are duplicate, partial, private, published, active, or static. IDS will allow individuals and repositories to manage, track, and preserve different types of identifiers and their associated data and metadata. The IDS data model which focuses on research processes and the relationship between their data inputs and outputs will significantly improve provenance metadata of distributed collections at any point of their lifecycle.