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The 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.
What Does This Mean for Scitation Users?
Presently, DOIs are merely displayed on the HTML abstracts of all Scitation articles,
as well as in the full-text versions (PDF and PostScript, and eventually full-text HTML,
where available) of all articles beginning with January 2001 issues.
(DOIs for
legacy data will appear only in the HTML abstracts as the DOI database
continues to be back-filled.)
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.
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