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.
Any physical, digital or abstract output can have a DOI, as long as it has a web page that represents it in some way. This might be a landing page for an online journal article, or a web page giving details of how a physical resource can be accessed.
The University DOI creation service
The Library offers a service whereby DOIs can be created for works.
We create DOIs using 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 be published either via the University website (york.ac.uk domain) or via the White Rose Research Online (WRRO) repository. For non-online works there must be a page on the University website explaining how the work can be accessed.
- 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.
- Datasets which are deposited with the Research Data York service 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.
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.
- Read more about PURE deposit
If you do not have a Pure account (or if you do, but are not an author/creator), 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.
- Read more about depositing to WRRO
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.