EZID DOI Service is Evolving

By Joan Starr, EZID Service Manager, California Digital Library;  Michael Witt, Associate Professor of Library Science, Purdue University Libraries; and, Patricia Cruse, Executive Director, DataCite

The California Digital Library (CDL) and Purdue University are adopting a new strategic direction for their EZID digital object identifier (DOI) services to support DataCite’s long-term sustainability and to improve DOI services for the broader community.

Over the course of the next two years, EZID DOI services will be phased out for users outside of the University of California. CDL, Purdue and Datacite will work together to support EZID users in joining and migrating their service to use DataCite directly or to help them evaluate other options.

The new membership model and recent change in fee structure makes the cost of DataCite membership comparable to EZID for most current users. The most popular features of EZID are in the process of being incorporated into DataCite’s service, such as a web-based management interface, broken link reporting, and ability to reserve a DOI. This development means that EZID users will not lose major functionality in migrating to DataCite and that these new features will enhance service for other DataCite members around the world.

In addition to DOIs, EZID supports ARK identifiers. CDL is committed to maintaining a global scope of business for ARKs as an open, library-based identifier infrastructure, consistent with University of California open access initiatives.

As two of the founding members of DataCite, Purdue and CDL played a key role in promoting data citation and in expanding the footprint of DataCite in the United States. This change augments their contribution to DataCite’s mission and sustainability, while they continue to provide DOI services to their respective institutions.

Together we are committed to making this transition positive for all of our users to enable a growing, responsive and vibrant set of services for the research community. For CDL clients, please send any questions you may have about this new direction to ezid(at)ucop.edu. For Purdue clients, please e-mail datacite(at)purdue.edu. For questions regarding DataCite services, benefits and fees, DataCite can be contacted directly at support(at)datacite.org.