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The digital object identifier (DOI) is an item-specific tag for citing and linking electronic documents and other intellectual property in a digital environment such as the Internet. It is analogous to the 30-year-old ISBN number for identifying books, with the added benefit that it functions as a hyperlink.

A DOI consists of two main components: the prefix, a unique alphanumeric combination assigned by a registration agency to the publisher; and the suffix, a unique alphanumeric combination given to the specific content item by the publisher.

A uniform resource locator (URL) specifies the address of a resource available on the Internet, such as an article, abstract, chart, or reference, but the once-valid URL has little value if that resource is later moved to a different Internet location. The DOI, once assigned, will never change and is therefore a persistent identifier that will follow the resource wherever it may be located and however it might be modified. A valid DOI may be entered into the DOI Resolver, http://dx.doi.org, to locate the resource of interest or may already be encoded by the publisher for one-click access to that resource.

As more and more journals begin incorporating DOIs in their reference lists, readers will need only to click a DOI to have a response screen, or a web page, appear on which the publisher offers the reader either the content itself, or, if not, further information about the object and information on how to obtain it.

CrossRef is the official DOI registration agency for scholarly and professional publications. It was established as an independent, non-profit membership association to facilitate efficient and reliable cross-publisher linking throughout online scholarly literature. The CrossRef system currently spans 200 publishers, 7,500 journals, and over 7 million content items. CrossRef recently began adding books and conference proceedings to its extensive linking network.

Please visit the DOI Handbook at http://www.doi.org/hb.html or http://www.crossref.org for more information.