January 25, 2017

New Year, New DOI Format

Our New Year's resolution:
Follow Crossref's DOI guidelines.
Check!

In late September 2016, Crossref announced an upcoming change to their DOI display guidelines. The new guidelines recommend that DOIs be displayed according to these best practices:

Display the full URL

Why? Because a URL can be easily shared with colleagues who just want to access the content

Format the URL as a clickable link

Why? So that readers can simply click the hyperlink to access the content

Use HTTPS instead of HTTP

Why? HTTPS enables a more secure web browsing experience

Drop "dx"

Why? As Crossref explains, “Originally the ‘dx’ separated the DOI resolver from the International DOI Foundation (IDF) website but this has changed and the IDF has already updated its recommendations so we are bringing ours in line with theirs.”

Putting these changes together, a DOI displayed according to the above guidelines will look like this:

https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1058

As Crossref summarizes:

“So–it's simple–always make the DOI a full link – https://doi.org/10.1006/jmbi.1995.0238 – even when it’s on the abstract or full text page of the content that the DOI identifies – and use ‘https://doi.org/’.”

As part of our 2017 New Year's resolution, we implemented these best practices into your Edifix experience. Now, all DOIs inserted by Edifix's Crossref Reference Linking tool will follow Crossref's display guidelines.

Have a suggestion or feature request for Edifix? Please let us know! We'd love to hear from you.