Digital Object Identifiers Assigned Through Washington University Libraries

The Washington University Libraries have contracted with DataCite to create free digital object identifiers (DOIs) for faculty, students, and researchers affiliated with Washington University who publish works on the Libraries’ platforms.

DOIs are permanent identifiers that can be assigned to physical and digital objects that make it easy for others to cite those objects. Researchers should create DOIs when they want to have formal citations associated with their work. A DOI will provide a consistent way of linking to the material. DOIs don’t change, and they can’t be deleted. They’re the most common mode of identification for digital objects for scholarly, research, and technical publications.

The University Libraries assign DOIs to theses, dissertations, images, books, book chapters, and other materials (white papers, research reports, etc.) in the Open Scholarship Repository and to data sets submitted to the Digital Research Materials Repository (DRMR). Researchers are invited to submit their research data to the DRMR to satisfy funder, publisher, or community requirements. All submissions will be reviewed, curated, receive a DOI, be published in the repository, and treated for long-term preservation.

To request a DOI, researchers should submit information about the object, including a URL (web page with information about the object), author name, the title of the project/object, the name of the publisher (the entity that holds, archives, prints, distributes, releases, issues, or produces the resource), the publication year, and the resource type. The information should be submitted to digital@wustl.edu. Library staff may follow up to discuss specific needs. Researchers will receive DOIs by email.

For more information, contact Jennifer Moore, head of Data Services, or Emily Stenberg, scholarly publishing and digital scholarship manager.