Get a DOI for your work
A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a way of uniquely and permanently identifying a resource, so that it can remain findable and citable in the long term.
Once registered with a DOI registry, a DOI will take you to the web address (URL) of the resource it refers to. A DOI can help people find your work from a citation and also help them to cite your work. DOIs can also help with citation tracking.
- Learn more about DOIs (doi.org)
What kinds of things can have a DOI?
DOIs are commonly created for academic outputs such as journal articles, books, book chapters, conference papers, reports, theses and datasets. If your work is being published by a publisher outside of the University, then it may be assigned a DOI by the publisher.
The University DOI creation service
The Library offers a DOI creation service for University-produced outputs that meet the requirements below. The service uses the DataCite DOI registry. Once fully registered with DataCite, DOIs will be publicly findable via DataCite Search as well as being resolvable via any DOI resolver, or by being embedded in the URL: https://doi.org/[DOI].
Requirements
- The work must have at least one University member as an author/editor/creator.
- The work must have as its primary place of publication either the University website (york.ac.uk domain) or the White Rose Research Online (WRRO) repository.
- The work must not already have been assigned a DOI, or be eligible for a DOI via another service. For example:
- If you are publishing your work through a publisher, then the publisher may assign a DOI.
- Research data must be deposited with the Research Data York service and will be assigned a DOI as part of that service.
- If the work will be published via the University website, a copy of it must be deposited in WRRO as well. This is so that, in the event that the work is no longer available via the University website, the DOI can be updated to link to the copy in WRRO.
- If the work will be published via the University website, the work must have a landing page with a bibliographic citation for the work and link to the work itself.
If you require multiple DOIs, or do not have the full information to fill out the form, you can email us at the address in the 'Contact us' section of this page.
FAQs
Yes, we can pre-register a DOI. This means that it won’t be resolvable yet (and can be deleted), but it enables us to tell you what the DOI will be in order that you can include it in your work before it has been finalised. You don’t need to know the URL of your work in order to pre-register a DOI.
If you want to pre-register a DOI, you can select the option for this on the online form. You will need to tell us later on when you want the DOI to be fully registered, so that it becomes resolvable. At that point, you will need to tell us the URL of your work. Please also let us know if you no longer require a DOI which has been pre-registered, and we will delete it. If we pre-register a DOI for you and you do not tell us to fully register it, we may eventually delete it, if it looks like it is not going to be used. We will let you know before doing this.
If you have a Pure account (research staff), please record the resource as an output on Pure and upload a digital copy there. Once the Pure record has been approved by Library staff, the resource will appear on WRRO.
If you do not have a Pure account, please deposit the resource directly into WRRO. We will not fully register a DOI until there is a copy in WRRO. If you request a DOI via the online form before you deposit your work in WRRO we will pre-register a DOI for you, but not fully register it until we have confirmed that a copy of your work is in WRRO.
Please see our guide on depositing your research for further guidance.
If your work is published on the University website and the URL (web address) needs to change, e.g. because of website restructuring, please get in touch with us and we can update the URL which the DOI links to.
If your work will no longer be available on the University website, please let us know and we will update the DOI so that it links to the copy of your work which is deposited in WRRO.
Not necessarily, but the DOI does need to link to a web page that is publicly accessible, even if that web page explains why the work is not publicly accessible, or how users might be able to access it.
The best way to present your DOI in your work is to include it within the following URL: https://doi.org/[DOI].
E.g. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15124/yao-nxk3-xj23
If your work is electronic in form then you could also hyperlink the text using the same URL.
If you are making your work available via the University website (york.ac.uk domain), you need to present your work on a web page that provides users with some information about your work before they access the work itself. This is known as a landing page. The purpose of this is to confirm to users who have clicked through via the DOI that they have arrived at the right place and to enable them to understand what your work is. The best way of doing this it to include a full bibliographic citation for your work on the landing page. It is also good practice to include the DOI on the landing page. Finally, the landing page should provide a way of accessing the work.
Ideally, each individual work should have its own landing page. If this is not possible, it is acceptable for multiple related works to be presented on one landing page. However, a more general purpose web page, with unrelated information, such as a home page, is not an appropriate landing page. The landing page should be focused on the work(s) presented.
Works which are made available via WRRO will automatically have a landing page generated by the respository software.
DataCite provides further guidance on landing pages.