Resources

The DOI Handbook and the Factsheets are the primary sources of information about the DOI system. The DOI Handbook explains the history, the fundamentals, the policies and the technology behind the system. The factsheets summarize key issues, and explain how DOI names and the DOI system relates to other identifier schemes, and other specifications and technologies.

Some additional resources are listed below.

Learn About Using DOIs

Watch a video and download a brochure that explain how what DOIs are and how they work, and how they benefit managers of digital content.

View presentations from several DOI Registration Agencies describing how they have implemented DOI for their industries and giving examples of the applications that have been built.

DOI Proxy Server System User Documentation

See the factsheet for technical information describing how the DOI system Proxy Server can be used as a client for resolving DOI names. Also discussed is encoding DOIs for use in URIs, Proxy Server query parameters, and Proxy Server REST API.

Tools & Services

Developers are working on DOI system tools and services, and browser tools and widgets for resolution services. A selection of tools that are in use, or under development, are listed on the DOI System Tools page.

DOI System Examples

Registration Agencies use DOI names in different ways to provide a range of services to their customers. RAs use metadata to ensure interoperability. It is their responsibility to manage their DOI name prefixes. DOI System Examples shows some of the ways in which RA's customers are using DOI names.

DOI Data Model

Creating and maintaining metadata for registered objects is a requirement of the DOI System. The DOI data model is one of the main technical components of the DOI system, in addition to kernel metadata and schemas for metadata interchange. See DOI Handbook, 4 DOI Data Model, for more information, and for links to the Data Dictionary.

Vocabulary Mapping Framework (VMF)

VMF is a downloadable tool that supports interoperability across communities by providing extensive and authoritative mapping of vocabularies from content metadata standards and proprietary schemes.

shortDOI^®

The shortDOI Service is a public service for creating shortcuts to DOI names, which can be very long strings. The service creates short handles of the form 10/abcde and enables short HTTP URIs of the form http://doi.org/abcde that are ideal for use in email, blogs, mobile messaging and more.

DOI & URI

DOI names may be expressed as URLs (URIs) through a HTTP proxy server. In addition, DOI is a registered URI within the info-URI namespace (IETF RFC 4452, the "info" URI Scheme for Information Assets with Identifiers in Public Namespaces). See the DOI Handbook, 2 Numbering and 3 Resolution, for more information.

Archive

The DOI system has been in use since 1998. Links to papers, publications and other sources that are no longer featured on this site, but that chronicle the history of the IDF and the development of the DOI system and may be of interest to users, can be located via the Archive.

Updated May 5, 2015