They are widely used to identify academic, professional, and government information, such as journal articles, research reports, data sets, and official publications.

The "10" part of the prefix distinguishes the handle as part of the DOI namespace, as opposed to some other Handle System namespace,[A] and the characters 1000 in the prefix identify the registrant; in this case the registrant is the International DOI Foundation itself.

182 is the suffix, or item ID, identifying a single object (in this case, the latest version of the DOI Handbook).

[23] Major content of the DOI system currently includes: In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's publication service OECD iLibrary, each table or graph in an OECD publication is shown with a DOI name that leads to an Excel file of data underlying the tables and graphs.

Included as part of this metadata are network actions that allow DOI names to be resolved to web locations where the objects they describe can be found.

Because DOI names are short character strings, they are human-readable, may be copied and pasted as text, and fit into the URI specification.

The DOI name-resolution mechanism acts behind the scenes, so that users communicate with it in the same way as with any other web service; it is built on open architectures, incorporates trust mechanisms, and is engineered to operate reliably and flexibly so that it can be adapted to changing demands and new applications of the DOI system.

[29] However, despite this ability, the DOI system has drawn criticism from librarians for directing users to non-free copies of documents, that would have been available for no additional fee from alternative locations.

A small kernel of common metadata is shared by all DOI names and can be optionally extended with other relevant data, which may be public or restricted.

Registrants may update the metadata for their DOI names at any time, such as when publication information changes or when an object moves to a different URL.

The International DOI Foundation (IDF) oversees the integration of these technologies and operation of the system through a technical and social infrastructure.

[32] The DOI system offers persistent, semantically interoperable resolution to related current data and is best suited to material that will be used in services outside the direct control of the issuing assigner (e.g., public citation or managing content of value).

Other "identifier systems" may be enabling technologies with low barriers to entry, providing an easy to use labeling mechanism that allows anyone to set up a new instance (examples include Persistent Uniform Resource Locator (PURL), URLs, Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs), etc.

Resolution redirects the user from a DOI name to one or more pieces of typed data: URLs representing instances of the object, services such as e-mail, or one or more items of metadata.

Indeed, as previously mentioned, this is how Crossref recommends that DOIs always be represented (preferring HTTPS over HTTP), so that if they are cut-and-pasted into other documents, emails, etc., they will be actionable.

A disadvantage of this approach for publishers is that, at least at present, most users will be encountering the DOIs in a browser, mail reader, or other software which does not have one of these plug-ins installed.

It also prevents third parties from imposing additional licensing requirements beyond those of the IDF on users of the DOI system.

The IDF is controlled by a Board elected by the members of the Foundation, with an appointed Managing Agent who is responsible for co-ordinating and planning its activities.

Membership is open to all organizations with an interest in electronic publishing and related enabling technologies.

[40] The Draft International Standard ISO/DIS 26324, Information and documentation – Digital Object Identifier System met the ISO requirements for approval.

It requires an additional layer of administration for defining DOI as a URN namespace (the string urn:doi:10.1000/1 rather than the simpler doi:10.1000/1) and an additional step of unnecessary redirection to access the resolution service, already achieved through either http proxy or native resolution.