A DOI, or Digital Object Identifier, is a type of persistent identifier (PID), which can be used to consistently and accurately reference a digital object. DOIs provide a way for ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials such as a journal article or monograph. A DOI is a unique identifier that can be connected to an ADS archive.

This is a typical example of a DOI found on the ADS Archives – https://doi.org/10.5284/1042733 

Each DOI has metadata associated with it, such as subject, location (URL), publisher and creator and while this metadata can change the actual DOI will never change. This persistence allows for a digital object’s DOI to be permanent while the actual location of the archive can change. 

Citing DOI

Citing a DOI is much more robust and permanent than citing a URL. This is because while the web address (or URL) to the archive can change, the DOI will never change.

The Crossref DOI Display guidelines recommend that DOIs should be displayed in the following format:

e.g. Jeffrey, S., Hale, A., Jones, C., Maxwell, M. and Jones, S. (2017). ACCORD: Archaeology Community Co-production of Research Data [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor]. https://doi.org/10.5284/1042733 

How to cite ADS resources using a DOI

Each ADS Archive contains a useful widget to easily provide a Sample Citation for that archive. This citation contains the authors, name of archive, data type and DOI for that archive.

To access a Sample Citation click on the ‘How to cite using this DOI’ link at the top of the archive page next to the authors of that archive.

This link will launch a pop up to provide some general information about DOIs and a Sample citation for that specific archive. Copy and paste this text to your computer for a straightforward way to properly cite an ADS archive.