To DOI or Not to DOI: Evaluating the Financial Sense of Persistent Links

Introduction

Pros of Using Digital Object Identifiers

The stated intended features of using a DOI are listed as:

• Status: To enhance a journal's quality and impact.
• Permanency: To attempt to provide permanent links for articles and studies.
• Error Reduction: To help avoid human or machine errors in referencing articles or study URLs.

DOIs differ from URLs in that they are static. In other words, they will not change once assigned, which, in theory, makes it easy to locate at any future time. Organizations that meet the contractual obligations of the DOI system and are willing to pay to become a member of the system can assign DOIs.

A DOI aims to resolve its target, the information object to which the DOI refers. This is achieved by binding the DOI to metadata about the object, such as a URL where the object is located. Thus, by being actionable and interoperable, a DOI differs from ISBNs or ISRCs, which are identifiers only. The DOI system uses the indecs Content Model for representing metadata.

Main Digest

Cons of Using Digital Object Identifiers

A process exists for obtaining DOIs, including submitting meta-data and fees. It is often very time and cost prohibitive for some authors and publishers to obtain DOIs for their published works.

In theory, referring to an online document (let's use the title of this document "Are DOI Links Worth the Time and Money" as an example throughout this article), by its DOI SHOULD provide a more stable link than directly using its URL (https://www.disabled-world.com/disability/accessibility/websitedesign/doi-links.php). However, if the "Are DOI Links Worth the Time and Money" article URL changes, the publisher, or purchaser of the DOI link, must update the information for the DOI(s) to maintain the link(s) to the URL(s). The publisher is responsible for updating their DOI database list of the new link locations for every article that changes its web address. In the event the new link locations are not updated, the DOI will become a dead link leaving the DOI a 404 error - or worse, a useless broken link.

Clicking a DOI link and waiting for the final destination page to load could be faster. Some Digital Object Identifiers will redirect your Internet browser many times before eventually bringing your browser to the intended destination, provided the publisher has maintained their URL database properly, or else you'll receive the dreaded 404 error - or worse, an unhelpful blank page.

Why Even Use a DOI Link?

A DOI is registered by a Registration Agency. Since a cost is associated with using a DOI or a similar service, it is certainly only feasible for some publishers to add these identifiers. Any website manager worth their salt can easily 301 redirect a website address to a new location address using Apache .htaccess or similar. Visitors who visit the old page will seamlessly be redirected to the article's new page location. This 301 redirect only takes a few seconds to implement, costs nothing, and is virtually instantaneous.

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Checking for Redirected and Broken DOI Links

If you wish to create a direct link from a DOI link on your webpage, click the link first, then copy and paste the FINAL destination URL and use that as your link - your visitors will thank you for not wasting their precious time for the DOI to resolve to its destination URL as you have linked directly to the final destination article and bypassed all the redirects in between that may contain unwanted tracking beacons, cookies, and other information gathering scripts.

What if the Linked to DOI Article Moves?

When linking directly to a DOI destination page and you wish to find out if the publisher has changed their DOI link final destination, use ScreamingFrog, Link Sleuth, or one of the many other broken/redirected link checkers on your site regularly to check for broken links, 404 pages, and 301/302 redirects - this should always be part of good website housekeeping anyway.

Cool Links Never Change

Remember, a persistent URL is one that never changes, and your webpage links bookmarked by 3rd parties don't break.

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Cite This Page (APA): Langtree, I. C. (2022, January 8 - Last revised: 2024, July 12). To DOI or Not to DOI: Evaluating the Financial Sense of Persistent Links. Disabled World. Retrieved September 14, 2024 from www.disabled-world.com/disability/accessibility/websitedesign/doi-links.php

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