Digital Object Identifier and their Use in Accessing Online Scholarly Materials in Africa

• Published in: Library philosophy and practice 2018-04, p.1
• Main Authors: Fasae, Joseph Kehinde, Oriogu, Chuks Daniel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bibliometrics; Digital Object Identifier; Information management; Information sources; Informetrics; Library and information science; Metadata; Open access publishing; Scholarly communication; Scholarly publishing; URLs
• ISSN: 1522-0222; 1522-0222

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) has been internationally recognized as a standard for identifying information resources on the web. It is an advanced tool that provides unique identification or permanent links to find specific journal articles and other information resources online. This paper discusses digital object identifier and their use in accessing online scholarly materials in Africa. It looks at the extent of Uniform Resource Locators (URL), understanding DOI functionalities, and benefits of DOI, scholarly materials with DOI in Africa with a critical examination of African Online Journals (AJOL) which is the biggest database in Africa. It was therefore discovered that the use and application of DOI in accessing online scholarly materials of African origin is still at crawling stage. The study recommends that the publishers in Africa should take advantage of this development by doing the needful and emulate those journals in African Online Journals (AJOL) to register their publications for DOI. This will enhance wider visibility and easy retrieval of African scholarly materials, while African authors also needs to wake up to explore the benefit of the DOI.