The DOI Standard

Nettie Lagace (@abugseye)NISO Associate Director for Programs

CEAL Workshop on Electronic Resources Standards and Best Practices

March 25, 2014

Digital Object Identifier

• DOI is both a unique identifier of a piece of digital content AND a system to access that content digitally. Persistent object identifier.

• DOI system has two main parts: (the identifier and a directory system) and a third logical component, a database.

• Developed by AAP (Association of American Publishers), now managed by International DOI Foundation.

Constructing a DOI

• Standard for persistent object identification.• DOI is a ‘dumb’ (opaque) number that identifies a digital

object:– Example: 10.1063/S000369519903216• 10 Registration Agency Prefix• 1063 Publisher Prefix• S000369519903216 Suffix (Publisher-assigned ID)

• The DOI and the URL pointing to the digital object, is registered with the service provider:– 10.1006/rwei.1999.0001 |

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0122267656000013

DOI Resolution

• DOI Handle System (developed by CNRI -Corporation for National Research Initiatives).

• Retrieval of object: – link is sent to central Handle directory where current

Web address is stored– location is sent back to browser with special message

to redirect to address, e.g:– http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/rwei.1999.0001 redirects to

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0122267656000013

• A DOI Registration Agency• General purpose: “to promote the development and cooperative use of

new and innovative technologies to speed and facilitate scholarly research.”– Specific mandate: be the citation linking backbone for all scholarly information in

electronic form• Began in 1999 with major publishers forming non-profit PILA (Publishers

International Linking Association), which operates CrossRef.• Members: 4865 publishers, 2005 libraries

– 2013: a BILLION DOI resolutions– Averages 2 million metadata queries/day

• Three major resolution-related services: depositing metadata including DOIs, submission of article references for the purpose of obtaining DOI, creation of links using DOIs.

http://www.slideshare.net/CrossRef/2013-crossref-annual-meeting-crossref-overview-edpentz

http://www.crossref.org/06members/50go-live.html

DOI as a Standard

• 2005: Published as ANSI/NISO Z39.84-2005 (R2010) Syntax for the Digital Object Identifier

• 2012: Published as ISO 26324:2012, Information and documentation – Digital object identifier system (includes functional information on technical resolution)

• Registration Authority: IDF, International DOI Foundation– Federation of Registration Agencies (including CrossRef,

DataCite, Airiti, Inc., China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), Japan Link Center (JaLC) )

Thank you! Questions?nlagace@niso.org

@abugseye