DOI

DOI is a unique alphanumeric string assigned to a digital object, such as a research article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association or a dataset hosted by the National Institutes of Health. The DOI system was developed by the International DOI Foundation in collaboration with the Association of American Publishers and the National Information Standards Organization. The DOI is used to provide a persistent and reliable link to a digital object, allowing users to access it from anywhere in the world, including Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, and the arXiv repository. This is particularly useful for researchers at institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley, who rely on academic journals such as Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Introduction to DOI

The DOI system is designed to provide a unique identifier for digital objects, such as electronic journals like the Journal of the American Chemical Society and online books published by Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. The DOI is composed of a prefix and a suffix, where the prefix is assigned to a registration agency such as Crossref or DataCite, and the suffix is assigned by the publisher or author, including Wiley, Elsevier, and Springer Nature. The DOI is often used in conjunction with other identifiers, such as the ISBN and the ISSN, which are used by libraries like the Library of Congress and the British Library. For example, the DOI Handbook provides guidance on how to use DOIs in conjunction with other identifiers, and is widely used by universities such as Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Oxford.

History of DOI

The concept of a digital object identifier was first proposed in the late 1990s by the International DOI Foundation, which was established by the Association of American Publishers and the National Information Standards Organization. The first DOIs were assigned in 2000, and the system has since been widely adopted by publishers and repositories around the world, including the National Library of Medicine, the National Science Foundation, and the European Commission. The DOI system has undergone several revisions and updates, including the introduction of new metadata standards and the development of new applications and tools, such as the DOI resolver and the DOI API, which are used by developers at companies like Google and Amazon. Today, the DOI is widely used by researchers at institutions like the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago, who publish in journals such as the Journal of the American Physical Society and the Proceedings of the IEEE.

Structure and Syntax

The DOI is composed of a prefix and a suffix, where the prefix is assigned to a registration agency and the suffix is assigned by the publisher or author. The prefix is typically a string of four or more digits, while the suffix can be any combination of characters, including letters, numbers, and special characters, as specified in the DOI syntax guidelines. The DOI is often displayed in a formatted string, which includes the prefix, a separator, and the suffix, and is used by databases like PubMed and Scopus. For example, the DOI for a research article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association might be displayed as "10.1001/jama.2020.12345", and can be resolved using the DOI resolver provided by Crossref or DataCite. This allows users to access the article from anywhere in the world, including universities like the University of Michigan and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Registration and Resolution

The DOI is registered with a registration agency, which assigns a unique prefix to the publisher or author. The publisher or author then assigns a suffix to the DOI, which is used to identify the specific digital object, such as a research article or a dataset. The DOI is then resolved using a resolver, which redirects the user to the location of the digital object, such as a website or a repository, including GitHub and Figshare. The DOI resolver is typically provided by the registration agency, and is used by libraries like the New York Public Library and the Boston Public Library. For example, the DOI resolver provided by Crossref can be used to resolve DOIs for articles published in journals like Nature and Science, and can be accessed from universities like the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Applications and Uses

The DOI has a wide range of applications and uses, including scholarly communication, data sharing, and digital preservation. The DOI is often used to provide a persistent link to a digital object, allowing users to access it from anywhere in the world, including research institutions like the National Institutes of Health and the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The DOI is also used to track usage metrics and citation counts, which are used by researchers at institutions like the University of California, San Diego and the University of Washington to evaluate the impact of their research. For example, the DOI for a research article published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society can be used to track the number of times the article is cited, and can be accessed from databases like Web of Science and Scopus.

Benefits and Advantages

The DOI has several benefits and advantages, including persistence, unique identification, and machine readability. The DOI provides a persistent link to a digital object, allowing users to access it from anywhere in the world, even if the URL or IP address changes, which is particularly useful for researchers at institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the California Institute of Technology. The DOI also provides a unique identifier for digital objects, which can be used to distinguish between different versions or editions of a work, such as a research article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association or a book published by Oxford University Press. Additionally, the DOI is machine-readable, which allows it to be easily parsed and processed by computers and algorithms, including those used by Google and Amazon. Overall, the DOI has become an essential tool for scholarly communication and digital preservation, and is widely used by researchers at institutions like the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. Category:Digital libraries