Content Directions, the company that commercially markets the Digital Object Identifier, announced new DOI agreements with McGraw-Hill and Greenwood Publishing and has commissioned and released a series of white papers outlining the business case for the DOI.
The DOI is a persistent Internet-based system that can identify, distribute or exchange information about all kinds of intellectual property. By clicking on the DOI link on a Web listing of book titles, a consumer can get a menu offering publisher information, online retailers, author information and much more. Unlike a Web URL, the DOI never goes dead and the information it offers can be easily and universally revised at every link at any time by the publisher.
David Sidman, CEO of Content Directions, announced a new agreement with McGraw-Hill, which already has assigned DOIs to more than 15,000 titles in its professional backlist, to assign DOIs to more than 8,000 articles in AccessScience, a Web-based reference site that also includes the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. And Greenwood Publishing, a Connecticut-based reference publisher, has entered into an agreement with Content Directions to assign DOIs to the 18,000 titles in its backlist. Sidman said the company is also working with R.R. Bowker to test-market a joint project that would allow Bowker to offer DOIs to all of its customers.
Content Directions has also commissioned "Using the DOI to Improve Profitability in Content Distribution," the second of four white papers on how to use the DOI for business. The papers are produced by EPS, a publishing consulting service with offices in New York and London. Sidman said the papers are "intended to illustrate the return of investment from implementing DOI."
Content Directions' book publishing customers include Penguin (for e-books), ibooks, Thomson and Acropolis Books. Sidman told PWthat DOI has reached "a big turning point. We've had a first wave of very large customers up and running long enough to measure results. And everyone is expanding their involvement with DOI."
