Ask Us! National University Library

A DOI name is a digital identifier of an object, any object — physical, digital, or abstract. DOIs solve a common problem: keeping track of things. Things can be matter, material, content, or activities.

Designed to be used by humans as well as machines, DOIs identify objects persistently. They allow things to be uniquely identified and accessed reliably. You know what you have, where it is, and others can track it too. (DOI.org)

DOIs include a prefix (prefixes always start with 10.) and a suffix, separated by a forward slash (/). Prefacing the DOI with doi.org/ will turn it into an actionable link, for example, https://doi.org/10.47366/sabia.v5n1a3. Clicking that link will ‘resolve’ it, i.e. redirect to the latest information about the object it identifies, even if the object changes or moves"  (DOI Foundation).

If you know the DOI, you can plug it into the DOI Foundation website (scroll down to the bottom of the page): https://www.doi.org/

Not every article will have a DOI. We have an FAQ on How to find a DOI number.