The IDF (http://www.doi.org) provides governance for the DOI system, and creates and manages the "policy infrastructure" which supports the DOI community. It is funded primarily through memberships, and it develops and promotes usage guidelines, metadata standards, and other business conventions regarding how the DOI should be used. It also manages the relationship with the technology provider, CNRI.

CNRI (http://www.cnri.reston.va.us), run by one of the the principal architects of the Internet, Dr. Robert Kahn, is the technology provider for the DOI system. CNRI is a non-profit research organization dedicated to the ongoing evolution of the Internet and its infrastructure. The "Handle System" (http://www.handle.net) developed by CNRI is the underlying technology platform for the DOI system. See "Internet pioneer urges overhaul:TCP/IP co-inventor Kahn sees a new Net where content is truly king", an interview with Dr. Kahn on MSNBC.com from November 21, 2000.

The AAP (http://www.publishers.org) is the major trade association of the publishing industry in the United States. The DOI project grew from requirements articulated by the AAP Enabling Technologies Committee, and the AAP and its member publishers continue to play an active role in the development of DOI infrastructure and applications. (See the timeline on this site for more information.)

CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org) is the non-profit organization run by the international STM Journal Publisher consortium PILA (Publishers' International Linking Association) with the aim of cross-linking the world's scientific journal literature. CrossRef went live in December 1999 and assigns DOIs to virtually all scientific journal articles published on the Web. Since its creation in 1999 with 12 publishers on board and approximately 350,000 DOIs registered, CrossRef has now grown to include more than 61 international Journal publishers, has assigned DOIs to more than 3 million articles.

   MICI (http://www.metadatainformation.org) was initiated as a project of the AAP Metadata Committee, chaired by David Sidman from 1998-99, and is now hosted and managed by Content Directions, Inc. This site is a clearinghouse of information about Metadata projects, standards, and initiatives worldwide. It allows the reader to look up projects from whatever perspective the reader may have: e.g. by "Type of Application" by "Type of Publisher," by "Subject," and of course, by "Project Name."

   MICI is also designed to be interactive. You can post questions or comments about the projects listed, and conduct threaded discussions with other readers. If you know of any project which is not yet in the database but should be, please create a record for it yourself. If you are involved in any of the projects already listed and feel that the existing description should be changed in any way, please post a comment in response to that project description. If you have any general suggestions about the website itself, please post a response to the placeholder "project" entitled "Feedback to this Website."

• "TopicWatch: DOI Digital Object Identifiers: Not Just for Publishers," (HTML; Microsoft Word) by David Sidman. CMSWatch (www.cmswatch.com).(March 31, 2002).

• "Digital Object Identifier: What Is It and Why Is It So Great?" by David Sidman and Tina Aridas. PrintMedia Magazine (www.printmediamag.com).(October 2001), pp. 22-23.

• "A Practical Guide to Automating the Digital Supply Chain with the Digital Object Identifier (DOI)," (HTML; Microsoft Word) by David Sidman and Tom Davidson, Publishing Research Quarterly, Summer 2001 - Volume 17, Number 2, pp. 9-23.

• "Automating the Digital Supply Chain: Just DOI it" (HTML; Microsoft Word) by David Sidman and Tom Davidson, appears on page 12 of the March 2001 issue of Upgrade: The Magazine of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA).

• "DOI:The Keystone for Digital Rights Management (DRM)" (HTML; Microsoft Word) is a white paper submitted by David Sidman to the SIIA DRM Working Group.

• For a description of the DOI-X project which led to CrossRef, (see timeline) including URLs for key published documents like the XML DTD for registering Journal Article metadata, the "Rules" document specifying the data population rules, etc., see the article co-authored by David Sidman in the February 2000 issue of D-Lib Magazine: Helen Atkins, Catherine Lyons, Howard Ratner, Carol Risher, Chris Shillum, David Sidman, and Andrew Stevens; "Reference Linking with DOIs: A Case Study," D-Lib Magazine, February 2000. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/february2000-risher)

• "What is the DOI?" is a tutorial on the Digital Object Identifier, with a special emphasis on Digital Rights Management applications. HTML; PDF (651K); Powerpoint (1004K); zip of Powerpoint (364K).

Note that these presentations were created in Powerpoint. The HTML renderings of these presentations are provided for convenience, but omit animations which may be important to understanding some diagrams, and may not display exactly as intended, especially in older or non-Microsoft browsers. If possible, please view the Powerpoint originals.