Research Guides: Linking to Library Resources: DOI

What is a DOI?

A DOI 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.

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 the DOI Foundation's proxy server by displaying it as a link: https://doi.org/10.1000/182.

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.

The provider assigns a DOI when your article is published and made available online.

Create a direct link using a DOI (Digital Object Identifier)

Many resources can be linked to by pasting the DOI (10.1080/1072303X.2011.557976) after the DOI resolver URL https://doi.org. A proxy prefix (http://unh.idm.oclc.org/login?url=) is also needed to provide access to off-campus users.

So a link to an article would look something like this:

https://unh.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://doi.org/10.1080/1072303X.2011.557976

This method of creating a Direct Link works with many vendors. For examples of where to find DOIs, see the Locating DOIs section of this tab.