During the last decade and since the advent of the World Wide Web, librarians and electronic publishers have sought ways to make links "unbreakable."

A DOI is a Digital Object Identifier, one of the standards for online content identification that allows for redirection in the face of changing, or less permanent, URLs.

This is what a DOI looks like: (It is usually preceded by "doi:" )

10.1000/123456 or 10.1016/S0006-8993(00)02382-8

Here's an example DOI from Science Direct:

Many databases and publishers use them, and they are more prevalent with UK or European-based content vendors.
Wiley, Kluwer, Emerald, Science-Direct, and Synergy all use DOIs.

If you enter the DOI into a browser all by itself, it won't work. To make it operational, remove the "doi:" and add the following to the front of the DOI:

http://dx.doi.org/

When you construct a URL from a DOI, it will look like this:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1000/123456 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0006-8993(00)02382-8

>>Back to the Linkguide