A unique signature of the semantic content of a digital object. It is not simply a checksum of a binary data file. Instead, the UNF algorithm approximates and normalizes the data stored within. A cryptographic hash of that normalized (or canonicalized) representation is then computed. The signature is thus independent of the storage format. E.g., the same data object stored in, say, SPSS and Stata, will have the same UNF. SYNONYM. UNF
