Editorial

Citation

Finch, E. (2009), "Editorial", Facilities, Vol. 27 No. 13/14. https://doi.org/10.1108/f.2009.06927maa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Facilities, Volume 27, Issue 13/14

There is something quite amazing about the hidden revolution that is taking place in the world of research. After many years of desperation as researchers fumbled blindly around in the online world, the promise of ready access never seemed further from reality. Links died. Authoritative sources turned out to be not so authoritative. Publications seemed to become rather ephemeral. However, in just the same way as the simple uniform resource locator (URL) emerged as the key to this confusion, another simple acronym is set to rescue us from it. Known as the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), its purpose is best explained by the International DOI Foundation:

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI^®) System is for identifying content objects in the digital environment. DOI^® names are assigned to any entity for use on digital networks. They are used to provide current information, including where they (or information about them) can be found on the Internet. Information about a digital object may change over time, including where to find it, but its DOI name will not change[1].

This rather unpromising definition has profound implications for the longevity and accessibility of digital material that uses it. Whilst the system is applicable to many object types, including patents, licenses and software, for our purposes we will concentrate on the possibilities afforded to researchers. Some of these include:

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  Granularity, i.e. the ability to identify a journal, an individual issue of a journal, an individual article in the journal or a single table in that article.

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  The realisation of persistent citation in scholarly materials, means that our papers will remain available in perpetuity.

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  The prospect of consolidating scientific data sets through a consortium of leading research libraries and technical information providers. In other words, not only will our papers be amenable to scrutiny – so will our data!

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  The extension of the well-founded ISBN numbering system to “actionable ISBN” or A-ISBN to enable the easy assimilation of the existing real-world book counterpart.

In simple terms, this means that the DOI is able to provide “information about information”, or metadata, which makes our research offerings much more visible. Systems such as Endnote and Zotero (personal bibliographic referencing systems) rely on such an identifier to assemble all the relevant bits of information that are necessary to describe and characterise our work accurately. At the simple touch of a button, we are able to obtain this information and assemble it in a way that suits us. This may take the form of a bibliographic folder system that we have compiled or perhaps a set of references that we are preparing for a paper.

Facilities, like a growing number of publications, makes use of the DOI standard to harness the power of the “semantic web”. Articles that appear in the journal remain visible in perpetuity. Furthermore, they are ready for indexing in your own personal bibliographic collection at the touch of a button. All this seems such a long way from the heady days of microfilms and index cards.

The Digital Object Identifier System, available at: www.doi.org/ (accessed 27 July 2009).

Edward Finch