With Digital Object Identifier (DOI), digital contents (more commonly referred to as objects) should remain permanently findable in the digital world even if URLs change. URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) physically describe a location on a computer, for example. If content is moved on it, it can no longer be found. DOIs, on the other hand, refer to an object (for example, a text) itself. In this way, they serve the purpose of permanent/persistent identification and take into account the particular changeability of the digital world. A well-known persistent identifier is the International Standard Book Number from the book world, the ISBN.
DOIs are particularly relevant for scientific publishing if the sources/publications to be cited are exclusively available on the Internet or are themselves published exclusively online.
All research data of the FDZ-DZHW are provided with a DOI.