A digital object identifier (DOI) is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency (the International DOI Foundation) to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet. The publisher assigns a DOI when your article is published and made available electronically.
A DOI name usually begins with 10 and should be labeled as a DOI in the bibliographic information of the article.
Most articles provided directly from the publisher (and not through an aggregated database like Ebsco or JSTOR) can be linked to by pasting the DOI after the DOI resolver URL http://dx.doi.org/. A proxy prefix is also needed to authenticate off-campus users (http://unh.idm.oclc.org/login?url=)!
So a link to an article would look something like this:
http://unh.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1072303X.2011.557976
This method of creating a persistent link should work for the following databases: ACM Portal, ASME Digital Library, Atypon Link, Berkeley Electronic Press, Cambridge Journals, Highwire Press, Informa Healthcare, IngentaConnect, Nature, Project Muse, Sage Premier, ScienceDirect (Elsevier), Science Magazine, SpringerLink, Taylor & Francis, University of Chicago Press, and Wiley Interscience (Wiley-Blackwell).