Content area
Full Text
The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) System is an initiative that grew out of discussions on electronic publishing within the Enabling Technologies Committee of the Association of American Publishers. The system was first seen at the February 1997 meeting of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing (PSP) division of the AAP in Washington, DC. Prior to this date, the AAP had identified a technology provider for the system, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) of Reston, Virginia, and it was the CNRI Handle System on which the DOI was demonstrated at the PSP meeting. CNRI is a nonprofit organization founded in 1986 to foster research and development for a national information infrastructure. It is headed by Dr. Robert Kahn, one of the developers of the Internet. (For further information on CNRI, please visit their site: http://www/ cnri.reston.va.us. Further information of the DOI can be found at http:// www.doi.org.)
The DOI System was actually launched later that year at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Between the Washington and Frankfurt meetings there were several significant developments. Specifically, the DOI had become an international effort. The Frankfurt effort was sponsored not only the AAP but also by the International Publishers Association (IPA) and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM). In addition, in September 1997 the AAP had transferred ownership of the DOI to a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva and Washington, DC and called the International DOI Foundation (IDF). The Director of the Foundation is Dr. Norman Paskin.
Another international body The International Advisory Panel of ISBN Agencies also became involved with the DOI the week after the 1997 Fair. R.R. Bowker, home of the U.S. ISBN Agency, had been closely involved in the early AAP efforts and had lobbied within ISBN International for the organization take on an active role in the development of the DOI. In its...