1. Can I purchase a DOI as an individual for my articles?

A: DOIs are granted to registered institutions, for example, Crossref allows the registration of institutions for the payment of an annuity and associated costs, Crossref does not sell individual DOIs to people, to obtain registration as an institution you must send a series of data that they verify before assigning a prefix that will be unique for the institution. There are web pages that give these identifiers free of charge to make it easier for authors to distribute their documents, for example, ResearchGate or Zenodo.

2. So can I register a DOI through a third party?

A: As an institution, it is recommended to register with Crossref directly or with a Sponsoring organization to process the DOIs, as is the case of High Rate Consulting, which offers Latin American journals the possibility of registering at lower prices thanks to the benefits that Crossref grants for middle of it. As an individual it will always be through a third party, be it the journal where you publish an article, the publisher where you publish a book or through ResearchGate or Zenodo for example which are basically repositories that give DOIs for content to individuals for free.

3. Is there an easier way to find the DOIs of the documents I reference? Many journals ask for them and it is a lot of work to enter one by one.

Crossref offers the Simple Text Query tool where you can check if the document has DOIs to add it to your references, this tool also allows publishers to deposit references for each DOI.

4. What is the purpose of my articles/books having a DOI?

The DOI allows the metadata of your article to be more easily found and harvested by search engines, thus allowing your documents to be found and more monitoring of the visit metrics, which gives an approach to the possibility of citation. The journals receive a monthly report of clicks on their DOIs, which can reflect the most searched or read topics.

5. Why do some of my articles have an error in the DOI?

Many journals deposit the DOIs after the issues are finished, so if the journal is continuous, it may take some time to activate it, in any case, contact the journal to request information about it. There may also be an error in the DOI you have in the document, in any way the journal will be able to clarify for you.

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