DOIs
To know how much interest your research is getting, including the number of citations, your work should have a DOI assigned to it.
What is a DOI?
A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier, a string of numbers and/or letters added to digital publications. DOIs are an internationally recognised standard for preserving and referencing online material. The majority of articles are published online first in order to keep pace with the rate at which information is shared over the internet in the Open Research environment. Articles that are published online with a DOI can be academically referenced and have citations/usage recognised before being assigned a journal issue and volume number.
DOIs can be assigned to any published digital object, examples of DOIs on different research outputs are:
What are the pros and cons?
Your online research can be referenced properly in an academic context, even without an issue or volume number. DOIs provide a permanent link to where the work can be found online, making them a great way to provide a reliable link to your research.
Usage metrics (aka bibliometrics and altmetrics) can be calculated for your research. For example - citations, social media mentions, sharing, bookmarking and any reference to the work online.
DOIs date your discovery: including the publishing date of your research ensures you get the credit where it's due.
Once a DOI has been generated, the research cannot be edited or changed.
Check if articles in your chosen journal are assigned DOIs, as this could be an indicator of the journal's suitability for your paper. If you want to submit your paper to a journal that doesn't assign DOIs, wait until after it is published then consider depositing it into a repository or sharing via an academic social networking site. Examples include Figshare, Github and ResearchGate or our own institutional repository, UDORA!
