Reference linking system for scientists conducting on-line research
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is an identification system for intellectual property in the digital environment developed by the International DOI Foundation on behalf of the publishing industry. Its goals are to provide a framework for managing intellectual content, link customers with publishers, facilitate electronic commerce, and enable automated copyright management. The 12 scientific and scholarly publishers involved in setting up the initiative believe it will: 'change the way scientists use the Internet to conduct on-line research.' It is expected to launch during the first quarter of 2000, and will enable researchers to link references in a journal article to the content of a cited journal article, typically located on a different server and published by a different publisher. On launching, approximately three million articles across thousands of journals will be linked through this service, and more than half a million articles will be linked each year thereafter.