Each book has a unique ISBN number. An example is 9781597776387 for The Obama Revolution by Kennedy-Shaffer published in 2009. With the explosion of information, we need to identify other resources with unique numbers like journal articles, books, and book chapters. DOI represents digital object identifier. CrossRef is the official association that collects DOIs for scholarly publications. The DOI is assigned by the publisher and registered with CrossRef. An example is 10.1037/a0015919 for the article “Are There Developmentally Limited Forms of Bipolar Disorder?” by Cicero, Epler, and Sher in Journal of Abnormal Psychology. The DOI is a required element in APA format which is used by Psychology and Science disciplines. The DOI provides a consistent link to content. All publishers have not complied yet but in the future we will be using another long string of numbers and letters to identify sources. Here is a sample entry for a journal article:
Ferretti, R.P. Lewis, W.E. & Andrews-Weckerly, S. (2009, August). Do goals
affect the structure of students’ argumentative writing strategies? The
Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 577-589.
doi:10.1037/a0014702
For more information, go to http://crossref.org
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