From Fondren Library. “News From Fondren: Volume 27, No. 2, Spring 2018.” (2018) Rice University: http://hdl.handle.net/1911/101532. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

In fall 2017, Fondren Library became a member of DataCite, an international non-profit organization that provides digital object identifiers (DOIs) for research data and other publications.

A DOI is a unique alphanumeric identifier assigned to digital content. Unlike a standard URL, a DOI is not associated with the publication’s location online. Rather, it is associated with the publication’s content. As a result, the DOI can remain stable even if the publication’s URL or metadata changes. This convention helps promote citation of online content and helps readers locate publications. DOIs are widely used in scholarly publishing; over 120 million DOIs have been assigned worldwide.

As a DataCite member, Fondren can facilitate DOI assignment to content in library-managed repositories (e.g., Rice Digital Scholarship Archive) and other university-managed platforms that are committed to long-term preservation and access.

Two recent projects have helped Fondren’s Digital Scholarship Services navigate the workflows of DOI assignment both in-house and through a non-library platform. The first DOIs in the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive were assigned to the first two issues of the Rice Historical Review, an undergraduate history journal. The Kinder Institute for Urban Research has partnered with Fondren to assign DOIs to some public datasets on its Urban Data Platform.

To learn more about Fondren’s DOI services, visit http://bit.ly/FondrenDOI