EC Library Guide on persistent identifiers: DOI
Digital Object Identifier
The DOI is a long-lasting reference to an object or to information about an object. The object can be anything: physical, digital or abstract. It can be used for research reports, articles and datasets.
Designed to be machine-readable, DOIs identify objects persistently and allow things to be uniquely identified and accessed reliably.
The DOI system has been standardised through the International Standards Organization as ISO 26324, Digital Object Identifier System.
A DOI is a unique number made up of a prefix and a suffix separated by a forward slash. This is an example of one: 10.1000/182. It is resolvable using our proxy server by displaying it as a link: https://doi.org/10.1000/182.
- DOI Foundation
The DOI Foundation is a not-for-profit organization. We govern the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system on behalf of the agencies who manage DOI registries and provide services to their respective communities. We are the registration authority for the ISO standard (ISO 26324) for the DOI system and we are governed by our Registration Agencies.
- DOI Registration Agencies
Registration Agencies collect metadata, assign DOI names, and offer other services such as reference linking or metadata lookup
Relevant Registration Agencies
- Publications Office of the European Union (OP)
The Publications Office of the European Union (OP) is a registration agency within the DOI system and supports the assignment of DOI names to relevant publications and other types of content within the EU institutions.
As well as the generic web proxy server run by The DOI Foundation which is accessed by prepending https://doi.org/ to the DOI name, there is an EU-specific web proxy run by the OP which works by prepending https://data.europa.eu/doi/.
As well as assigning DOIs to monographs, OP also now assigns DOIs to articles in journals, as well as datasets. By working in partnership with other DOI registration agencies, notably Crossref and DataCite, it is able to offer developed services for these content types to its clients, over and above a ‘simple’ resolution service. - Crossref
Crossref is a global community infrastructure making all kinds of research objects easy to find, assess, and reuse through a number of services critical to research communications. Their over 19,000 members come from 151 countries and their ~150 million DOI records contribute to the collective vision of a rich and reusable open network of relationships connecting research organizations, people, things, and actions; a scholarly record that the global community can build on forever, for the benefit of society.
- DataCite
DataCite is a global non-profit organization that provides DOIs for research data and all other research outputs. By assigning DataCite DOIs, research outputs become discoverable and associated metadata is made available to the community. DataCite develops additional services to make it easy to connect and share research outputs with the broader research ecosystem and to assess the use of outputs within that ecosystem. All organizations within the research community can join DataCite to start registering DOIs.