Life Science Identifiers[1][2] are a way to name and locate pieces of information on the web. Essentially, an LSID is a unique identifier for some data, and the LSID protocol specifies a standard way to locate the data (as well as a standard way of describing that data). They are a little like DOIs used by many publishers.
An LSID is represented as a uniform resource name (URN) with the following format:
urn:lsid:⟨Authority⟩:⟨Namespace⟩:⟨ObjectID⟩[:⟨Version⟩]The lsid: namespace, however, is not registered with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), and so these are not strictly URNs or URIs.[3]
LSIDs may be resolved in URLs, e.g. http://zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:CDC8D258-8F57-41DC-B560-247E17D3DC8C