OPOCE appointed as a DOI Registration Agency

The International DOI Foundation has announced the appointment of The Office for Official Publications of the European Communities (OPOCE) as a DOI Registration Agency. Through OPOCE, DOIs will now be assigned for some 62 EU bodies (institutions, offices, agencies and other bodies). These include the European Parliament, the Council, the Commission, the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, as well as the European Central Bank. OPOCE produces publications in the 20 official languages of the EU Member States, a unique phenomenon in the publishing world.

Serge Brack, Head of the Author Services Unit at OPOCE, said: "As part of the evolution of modern publishing, OPOCE has been requested to extend its services to the identification and official designation of electronic resources. DOI offers us the best possible system readily available to cover all the possibilities we need. We are particularly excited by the options of using the DOI's long-term stability and multiple linking and description features as a tool for relating multiple language versions of the same document, for extending the granularity of scope so as to identify individual articles, and extending our coverage to our historical archive and the so called "grey literature". Initially, we will focus on our present catalogue of publications but will work with our colleagues at the International DOI Foundation and the other DOI Registration Agencies in developing further features and services".

Norman Paskin, Director of the International DOI Foundation, said: "We are delighted to welcome OPOCE to the growing DOI community. With TSO, OECD and now OPOCE using DOIs, DOI has extended its coverage from that of commercial publishing into the world of official publications. The remarkable feat of managing publications in 20 languages, with a back catalogue covering 50 years, and the need for each to be an official record, is a tribute to OPOCE's team and offers a significant opportunity for the DOI to bring the benefit of its managed information approach to EU publications."

The International DOI Foundation is a not-for-profit organization created in 1998 to develop and promote the Digital Object Identifier^® system for identifying content in the digital environment. Through the use of standards-based components the DOI allows persistent access and semantically interoperable management of information. Over 14 million DOIs, from over 600 organisations, are currently assigned, through a growing number of Registration Agencies.

The Office for Official Publications of the European Communities (OPOCE), based in Luxembourg, is the publishing house of the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the European Union (EU). OPOCE currently acts as the official publisher for some 62 EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies (mandated under Article 2 of Decision 2000/459/EC, ECSC, Euratom). It is responsible for producing and distributing EU publications on all media and by all means. The Publications Office is also the exclusive ISBN and ISSN agency for EU publications. The Office currently has 70,000 active publications, some 1300 new titles per year, and 185 periodicals. Following the recent accession wave on 1 May 2004, the daily output of the Publications Office now covers 20 languages. Publications are produced electronically first in Acrobat^® PDF format and later in printed form, as required.

From the Press Release Archive:

• IDF Press Release, July 2003: "UK Official Publications - UKOP Becomes DOI Enabled through TSO"
• DOI News December 2003: "OECD to use DOIs"

For further information:

Norman Paskin, Director, International DOI Foundation
n.paskin@doi.org
Tel: (+44) 1865 314033

Serge Brack, Head of Unit, Office of Official Publications of EU
serge.brack@cec.eu.int
Tel: (+352) 29 29 425 68