Definition
Plain language
A permanent identification code attached to a published paper, so its link never breaks.
As stated in the literature
Digital Object Identifier — a persistent, registered identifier resolving to a scholarly work's canonical location; used by citation-verification pipelines as a direct lookup to confirm a reference exists.
Also called: DOIs
Why it matters: It gives each published work a permanent address, so citations stay findable and verification tools can look them up directly.
For example, clicking a paper's DOI link takes you straight to that exact paper even if the publisher later reorganizes its website.
Heard on the show
“Stage two: check each reference against six big bibliographic catalogs — Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, CrossRef, DBLP, the ACL Anthology, and direct identifier lookups like DOIs and arXiv.”Episode 201 — One in Four NeurIPS Papers Cites a Reference That Doesn't Exist