What is a DOI?
DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier. A DOI is meant to be a unique permanent "address" for an online resource, such as an article or ebook, which never changes, even if the item's URL changes. The DOI is assigned when the document is published online.
DOIs are significant because many citation styles (e.g, APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.) require including them in citations. Here is an example:
Steptoe, Andrew. “Happiness and Health.” Annual Review of Public Health, vol. 40, no. 1, 2019, pp. 339–59, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040218-044150.
What does a DOI look like?
A DOI can appear in a few ways:
A webpage URL: https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2021-0226
An alphanumeric string: DOI: 10.1108/JD-11-2021-0226
Note: The DOI URL should not be confused with the permalink URL option that is available in most library databases, that provides a direct link to an article as it appeared in a specific database.
How do you find or identify an online document's DOI?
When you are searching in one of the Libraries' article databases, the DOI is typically included in the brief record for an article in the results list:
When you are looking at an online journal article, the DOI typically appears in the descriptive bibliographic section that lists the authors, publication date, page numbers, etc. Google Scholar does not include DOI information in its search results lists, so you would need to click on the title of an article and be taken to the the publisher's web site, where you could find the DOI in this way.
You can also go to http://crossref.org/, click on "Search Metadata," and search for an article by title there. Crossref is an organization that registers DOIs for documents as they are published online.
If you are not able to find the DOI using any of these methods, the online resource probably does not have a DOI.
DOIs were implemented beginning in 2000. Although some journal publishers have begun retroactively applying DOIs to articles published before that year, some older olders may not (yet) have an assigned DOI.