oading any data to a DataONE MN, it is necessary to obtain a DataONE user identity that will be provided with each request to upload or update data. The method that DataONE uses to achieve this is known as <em>user identity authentication</em>, and requires that an <em>authentication token</em>, which is a character string, be provided during upload. The process to obtain this token is described in the <em>DataONE Federation</em> vignette, in the section <strong>DataONE User Authentication With Tokens</stro