In Fall 2017, Fondren became a member of DataCite, global non-profit organization that provides digital object identifiers (DOIs) for research data and other scholarly objects. In addition to supporting the allocation of DOIs and accompanying metadata, DataCite supports data discovery and promotes data citation.
A DOI is a persistent and unique identifier of an object. It permanently identifies content and related metadata for an object over the course of its lifecycle. DOI names resolve to web locations where the objects they describe can be found. Information about a digital object may change over time, including where to find it and who owns it, but its DOI will not change. The DOI is the most widely used naming standard for digital resources in the publishing world. DOI is an ISO International Standard and more than 120 million DOIs have been assigned worldwide.
As a DataCite member, Fondren can facilitate DOI assignment to content in library-managed repositories (e.g., Rice Digital Scholarship Archive) and other university-managed platforms that are committed to long-term preservation and access.
Two recent projects have helped Digital Scholarship Services navigate the workflows of DOI assignment “in-house” and through a non-library platform. The Kinder Institute has partnered with Fondren to assign DOIs to some public datasets on its new Urban Data Platform. The first DOIs in the Rice Digital Scholarship Archive were assigned to the first two issues of the Rice Historical Review, an undergraduate history journal.
To learn more about Fondren’s DOI services, see the http://bit.ly/FondrenDOI or contact Digital Scholarship Services.