DOI Foundation

The DOI Foundation is a not-for-profit organization responsible for governing the Digital Object Identifier system on behalf of the registration agencies that manage DOI registries. It serves as the registration authority for the ISO 26324 standard, giving the site a standards-focused rather than consumer-facing role.

The site explains what a DOI is, how the identifier system is structured, and how registration agencies operate within it. Visitors can read about the foundation’s board and governance, sustainability practices, and the community of agencies spanning entertainment, standards, the built environment, natural history collections, scholarly communications, and research data.

It is aimed at organizations and professionals who need to understand identifier infrastructure: publishers, research institutions, metadata specialists, and standards bodies considering membership or agency services. General users looking to resolve a DOI will not find a resolver here.

Use the DOI Handbook and the registration agency listings to understand which agency covers a given domain, and consult the governance pages before pursuing membership. Overall, it is a compact institutional reference for persistent identifier infrastructure.