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Legal Scholarship Publishing Guide: Digital Object Identifiers

Why are DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) important to Open access scholarship?

A type of persistent identifier (PID), DOIs are a unique text of characters that are used to identify digital objects, such as journal articles. Here are some of the reasons why DOIs are important practice of open scholarship:

  • They increase reach and impact of research and work by enhancing visibility and reliability.
  • Mandatory for some indexing database criteria.
  • Enable linking and cross-referencing between academic indexes and databases.
  • They prevent link rot, and can remain accessible even if the URL location of the digital object (article) is moved.
  • Used to reliably assign work to copyright holder.

To receive a DOI a publisher must have a membership with an issuing organization. Osgoode Digital Commons has a sponsored membership with Crossref. Osgoode journals that are open access, actively publishing and have an ISSN qualify to receive DOIs from ODC.

Reference Linking

Another requirement for DOI minting is that submitted articles will need to use DOIs when citing other works in an article's references section. Reference linking is an obligation for all Crossref members and for all current journal content (published during this and the two previous years).

Instead of:

Soleimani N, Mohabati Mobarez A, Farhangi B. Cloning, expression and purification flagellar sheath adhesion of Helicobacter pylori in Escherichia coli host as a vaccination target. Clin Exp Vaccine Res. 2016 Jan;5(1):19-25.

Display the DOI link:

Soleimani N, Mohabati Mobarez A, Farhangi B. Cloning, expression and purification flagellar sheath adhesion of Helicobacter pylori in Escherichia coli host as a vaccination target. Clin Exp Vaccine Res. 2016 Jan;5(1):19-25. https://doi.org/10.7774/cevr.2016.5.1.19
 

Policy and Tools

Osgoode strongly recommends its journals require reference linking from authors and state this requirement in a clear way.

Crossref has a simple text query tool that allows you to copy and paste a reference list and Crossref will match with any existing DOIs to that reference.