In 1997, The Association of American Publishers released the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system. The DOI arose from the publishing industry’s concern over copyright management in the emerging digital, networked environment. Describing the DOI as “the license plate for digital content on the information superhighway”, the AAP unveiled the project to mixed reviews.

Comparable to ISBN or Dewey Decimal numbers, DOI ultimately will achieve much more, including identifying everything from a book to chapters and even smaller units of text within the book—vastly enlarging the universe of copyrighted, saleable objects. The creation of an international system in which publishers and other owners of copyright regularly tag their pieces of intellectual property with DOIs in the way that book publishers regularly use ISBNs is the goal of the project. The DOI system consists of three parts:

A two-part identifying number, the DOI, assigned by the DOI agency and the publisher that identifies both publisher and document;

An automated directory, composed of a computer system that will accurately link an object, be it a book, picture or CD-ROM, to whomever currently owns it;

The databases maintained by publishers that provide further information to the user.

The DOI

A DOI consists of a unique, persistent identifier providing a link between a user and a rights-holder or distributor. Each publisher is assigned one or more prefixes. The first two digits of the prefix identify the directory manager who assigned the number. After the first two digits comes a number indicating the publisher. This is called the publisher ID or the Information Provider ID. The publisher ID is followed by a slash, a suffix, and the item ID. The publisher or rights holder assigns this set of characters that identifies the content uniquely. [...continued]