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Creating Durable Links

What's a DOI?

A DOI is a Digital Object Identifier.

It is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency (the International DOI Foundation) to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet. The publisher assigns a DOI when your article is published and made available electronically.

The DOI should never change. Therefore, it is an ideal medium for creating links to full text articles.

A DOI most often look like this: doi: 10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00053-8

Looking for a DOI?

If you don't see one and want to check, you can go to crossref.org and type in the author's last name and the name of the journal article.

Use the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to Generate a Durable Link

Many vendors are using Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to uniquely identify articles in their databases.

Look for the DOI or doi: field on bibliographic record screens, often found by clicking on the title of the article or a full record link.

For example: doi: 10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00053-8

To use it as a link, add the prefix http://dx.doi.org/ to the number portion resulting in
this: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00053-8

 Vendors that include DOIs include:

  • ACM Digital Library
  • American Chemical Society
  • American Institute of Physics (AIP)
  • American Mathematical Society
  • American Physical Society (APS)
  • American Society of Civil Engineers
  • Annual Reviews
  • Anthrosource
  • ASME Digital Collections
  • IEEE Xplore
  • Institute of Physics (IOP)
  • Journals @ Ovid
  • Project Muse
  • Royal Society of Chemistry
  • Sage
  • ScienceDirect
  • Springer
  • Taylor & Francis
  • Wiley/Blackwell/Synergy

Making Links Work from Off-Campus

If you want a link to be accessible off campus, your URL will need an EZproxy prefix for Lakehead user authentication.

Please use the Proxied URL Generator below to add the necessary prefix to your URL.

Paste your URL here:

New proxied URL: