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Digital Object Identifier [DOI®]
What is a DOI?
As defined by the
International DOI Foundation,
"the Digital Object Identifier (DOI®) is a system for
identifying and exchanging intellectual property in the digital
environment. Developed by the International DOI Foundation, it
provides a framework for managing intellectual content, for linking
customers with content suppliers, for facilitating electronic
commerce, and enabling automated copyright management for all types of
media."
In the simplest terms, the DOI is a persistent
identifier for an article as well as a system which processes that
identifier to deliver content requested by a user. In the future, a
DOI will be clickable like a URL, but will differ from a URL in that
it will identify an object (like an article), not the location
(Scitation, for example) where that object is located. A DOI is linked
to an object by a resolver system, and the location to which it
resolves may be changed easily by the publisher without the user ever
reaching a dead-end or broken link.
How Do I Use A DOI?
Even though the DOI is currently
only displayed, the functional aspects of the DOI itself and the DOI
system — when deployed for linking — will be utterly transparent to
the user. In the near-future, the DOI will become a primary linking
tool for publishers participating in the
CrossRef
project, a collaborative reference linking service. Ultimately, this
means that when an Scitation user clicks on a reference citation in a
journal and immediately accesses the cited article or bibliographic
record, he or she would have been directed there by the DOI-based
linking system enabled by the CrossRef service. The DOI pinpoints the
location of the content on the Internet, and CrossRef serves as a
"digital switchboard" that directs users to that location.
Want to Know More About the DOI and Its Use?
See
the
International DOI Foundation FAQ for more
information.
[Site maintained
by Vijay A. Sethuraman; Date last updated:
March 10, 2007] |
