If you haven’t been to the Oceanography Web pages lately, you might take a moment and check them out. Earlier this year, we began assigning digital object identifiers (DOIs) to Oceanography articles after The Oceanography Society became a member of CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org). DOIs are unique alphanumeric identifiers that publishers assign to pieces of intellectual property, such as journal articles, books, and conference proceedings. They provide persistent links to articles’ locations on the Internet so that users never have to worry about broken links if articles’ urls change. DOIs will make it easier for other researchers and libraries to find your Oceanography articles and easier for other publishers to link to your article page. The clear benefit is more exposure for your published work.

The Oceanography staff started off by assigning DOIs to articles in the March 2011 issue; for example, that issue’s introduction is listed as “Gordon, A.L., and C.L. Villanoy. 2011. The oceanography of the Philippine Archipelago: Introduction to the special issue. Oceanography 24(1):13, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2011.13.” We are working our way backward to assign DOIs to earlier magazine issues. Currently, we have assigned DOIs back through September 2010. Looking ahead to new magazine issues, each article will be assigned a DOI as soon as it is available electronically on the Oceanography Web pages, which is generally within a few days of going to press.

As part of the electronic updating, we are overhauling the look, feel, and content of Oceanography’s Web pages. Each article that has been assigned a DOI now has its own page that includes the abstract, reference list with CrossRef links where applicable, and citation, as well as the article pdf (which has always been available on our Web site). The article’s DOI is also listed on this page. Updating the Web pages for past issues will take many months or more, so please be patient if you are an author hoping to have your article’s Web page freshened and a DOI assigned.

– Ellen S. Kappel, Editor

Kappel, E.S. 2011. Quarterdeck: Oceanography is now assigning DOIs to articles. Oceanography 24(2):5, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2011.39.

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