n. (abbr. DOI)a registered, unique, persistent URL identifier for an information artifactPaskin 1999The DOI was an outgrowth of a program of the Association of American Publishers to develop tools to enable management of copyrightable materials in an electronic environment. In order to protect something, it is first necessary to uniquely and unambiguously designate what that entity is. The DOI therefore began as a practical initiative in unique persistent naming, as the first part of a fuller implementation to include tools to manage the persistently named entities themselves. ¶ At its simplest, the DOI system offers: ¶ a persistent identifier of intellectual property; and ¶ a mechanism to resolve that identifier to some useful information or service.Paskin 1999The DOI provides not only a persistent name (identifier) but also a resolution system, using the technology of the Handle System.DPC 2015DOIs are digital identifiers for objects (whether digital, physical or abstract) which can be assigned by organisations in membership of one of the DOI Registration Agencies; the two best known ones are CrossRef, for journal articles and some other scholarly publications, and DataCite for a wide range of data objects. As well as the object identifier, DOI has a system infrastructure to ensure a URL resolves to the correct location for that object.MSU Library 2015Our second consideration is that Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are quickly becoming the standard for scholarly articles and data sets, and a few recent publications have shown DOIs to be robust persistent identifiers, especially for data.MSU Library 2015The main difference between DOIs and ARKs is that DOIs are generated and managed by a few specific organizations, whereas ARKs can be generated and managed by any institution.Force and Smith 2021, 109When possible, the digital surrogate should include a hyperlink to a digital or digitized finding aid that identifies the location of the original physical object. We acknowledge that making this link may be challenging for repositories because URLs may change during system updates, effectively rendering the links moot unless the digital finding aid has an established DOI (digital object identifier).WashU Libraries 2025bA digital object identifier (DOI) is a unique identifier associated with an object, such as an electronic document. This can include journal articles, data and data sets, images, books, and book chapters. The benefit of a DOI is it is a persistent identifier that is available and managed over time; this means it will not change if the item or object is moved or renamed (from EZID). DOIs help alleviate the problem of dead links or link rot.
Notes
The DOI system is an international standard (ISO 26324) that is managed by the International DOI Foundation. There are various registration agencies that can generate and manage DOIs for member organizations.
