DOI links

I'm going to start linking to science articles using the DOI system. Here's a description of how the system works.

The digital object identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to
electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric
character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon
the initial electronic publication. The DOI will never change.
Therefore, it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly
Articles in Press because they have not yet received their full
bibliographic information.

The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows:

doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071

When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they are guaranteed never to change.

Complete the following steps to resolve a DOI:

1. Open the following DOI site with your browser:
   

   http://dx.doi.org

2. Enter the entire DOI citation in the text box provided, and then click Go.
   

   The article that matches the DOI citation appears in your browser window.

The DOI scheme is administered by the International DOI Foundation. Many of the world's leading learned publishers have come together to build a DOI-based article linking scheme known as CrossRef.

Here's how we'll use it here. At the bottom of each post there will be a link that refers to an article with a DOI number. Copy the link target (it will be the DOI number). Then toward the top of this blog's sidebar, click on the DOI link to be taken to the DOI lookup page. Finally, paste the link target into the box and press enter. (This makes it seem harder than it actually is).

[update: Damn, I can't get blogger to list just the DOI number, so you need to delete the 'DOI' in the link target when you paste it in. Ugh, let me know if this is more trouble than its worth.]