DOI

From The Big Picture Wiki

DOI – Digital Object Identifier

As discussed above, the DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. It’s a persistent identifier (like the PURL – Persistent Uniform Resource Locator), which associates a digital object with its metadata, including the URL of where to find that object. If that object moves to a different URL, that information is changed in the DOI registry for that object. So if a short story that previously was for sale on Amazon moves to Barnes & Noble’s website, for example, the user doesn’t need to know this – the DOI takes care of that.

Based on the CNRI Handle system, the DOI is a persistent URL that not only identifies a digital object, it resolves the location about where that digital object is to be found, where its metadata is to be found, and provides a data model. The International DOI Foundation is comprised of a number of registration agencies – among them R. R. Bowker, Nielsen BookData, Crossref, and the Office des publications EU.

The most successful use of DOI has been in the electronic journal supply chain. DOIs are used to identify journal articles or entire journals, and resolve to locations where readers can access those articles or journals. DOI has not caught on yet in the book world, perhaps because of its complexity, insufficient understanding as to how it is to be used, and the slowness of the book publishing industry to create a sustained model for distributing electronic content.

However, a DOI could prove to be quite useful as more book content “goes electronic”. A DOI can have an ISBN embedded in it, as well as other meaningful data. If the experience of Crossref is anything to go by, the DOI will catch on soon in textbook publishing (McGraw-Hill is already using it).

--Ljnd 13:00, 11 June 2007 (EDT)