What is a DOI? Digital Object Identifiers explained
A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a permanent ID number for a research paper, dataset, book chapter or other scholarly item. Like an ISBN for books, it identifies one item for ever — even if the publisher moves its website.
What does a DOI look like?
A DOI always starts with 10., followed by a code for the registering organisation, a slash, and an ID for the item:
10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2
To open it, put https://doi.org/ in front:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2
The doi.org address always sends you to the item's current location.
Why DOIs matter
- Links never break. Web addresses change; DOIs are kept up to date by the publisher.
- Exact references. A DOI points to one specific paper, so there is no confusion between papers with similar titles.
- Citation tracking. Databases such as OpenAlex use DOIs to connect papers and count citations — the numbers you see on ResearchBoard rely on them.
Who gives out DOIs?
DOIs are managed by the International DOI Foundation and issued through registration agencies. For journal articles the main agency is Crossref; for datasets it is often DataCite. Journals, preprint servers and data repositories register a DOI when they publish.
How to find a paper's DOI
- Look at the first page of the paper or the top of its web page.
- Search the title on Crossref Search.
- In Google Scholar or PubMed, the DOI usually appears in the full record.
Using DOIs in your references
Most reference styles (APA, Vancouver, Harvard and others) now ask you to include the DOI as a link at the end of each reference, for example:
Author, A. (2020). Title of the paper. Journal Name, 12(3), 45–67. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx
Reference managers such as Zotero or Mendeley can fill in everything automatically from a DOI.