What is a DOI?
Answer
A DOI, or Digital Object Identifier, is a string of numbers, letters and symbols used to permanently identify an article, thesis, dataset, or document and link to it on the web. A DOI will help your reader easily locate a document from your citation. It will always refer to that publication, and only that one. While a web address (URL) might change, the DOI will never change.
Where can I find the DOI?
- In most recent publications, the DOI will appear on the publication's landing page and also be printed with the publication itself, usually on the first page somewhere, or in the header or footer.
- If the DOI isn’t on the article, look it up on the website CrossRef.org (use the “Search Metadata” option).
- At Weizmann, the DOI will appear on the full results page in OneSearch
How can I use a DOI to find the publication it refers to?
- The recommended format for DOIs since 2011 is an active link, so if your DOI starts with http:// or https://, simply paste it into your web browser. This will usually lead you to a journal publisher’s page for the article, but wherever the publication is, it will lead to the location where a publication is stored.
- Pre-2011, DOIs started with the number 10 (and some are still formatted this way). You can turn any DOI into a URL by adding https://doi.org/ before the DOI. For example, http://doi.org/10.34933/wis.000079
- If you’re off campus when you do this and the publication is not Open Access, you’ll need to use the Weizmann EZproxy prefix in front of the DOI to gain access to Weizmann's subscribed content: "https://ezproxy.weizmann.ac.il/login?url=https://doi.org/" or, for example, https://ezproxy.weizmann.ac.il/login?url=10.34933/wis.000079