What is a Digital Object Identifier (DOI)?
Digital Object Identifiers are unique ID numbers assigned to scholarly journal articles. DOI's can be found in PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL and other databases. DOI's are used in APA Style, and are also useful shortcuts to access an article quickly.
For example, here is an DOI in EBSCO:
And here is a DOI in PubMed:
Beyond being required in some citation formats, DOI's can be used to quickly access an article. The DOI for every article is the same regardless of which full-text database is being used to access it, so you can copy and paste a DOI into the search box in PubMed and it will take you right to the article:
When writing out a DOI, the DOI number should always be preceded by http://doi.org/. For example, the DOI above would be written as https://doi.org/10.1097/PHM.00000000000000583.
If you are given a DOI that doesn't appear in PubMed, you can also search for it using Crossref Metadata Search to get the citation.
