Technology Blog

Those of you who are regular readers of Ars' science content are probably aware of our use of Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs, which act as online reference information, taking readers directly to the papers being discussed. Readers almost never comment about that feature, except when it fails, in which case we invariably hear about it—and it fails at least once a month. We've tried explaining both our reasons for using them and the reasons they break in the forums, and have recently linked to Ed Yong's excellent discussion of the system and its problems. Within a week, we were dealing with complaints due to a broken DOI. So, this is an attempt to provide a comprehensive description of the DOI system, why we use it, and why it doesn't always work smoothly. Referencing, effort, and reward For most of our readership, reading an Ars science article is the beginning and end of their exposure to a topic. But we also have a notable population of scientists who read, and they may find themselves interest