The Director of the European Union Publications Office, Mr. Thomas L. Cranfield, and the Director of the International DOI Foundation, Dr. Norman Paskin, signed an official agreement today, December 1st 2004, confirming the Publications Office of the European Union as a Registration Agency for the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system.

Thomas Cranfield said: "In an era of electronic publishing developments it has become indispensable for the Office to extend its identification services to digital publications. The Digital Object Identifier offers the flexibility of structure and potential of granularity that we are looking for. Publications Office is to be a specialised agency, focusing on the needs of its institutional clients and stakeholders only."

Norman Paskin said: "We are delighted to welcome Publications Office to the growing DOI community. With TSO, OECD and now Publications Office using DOIs, DOI has extended its coverage from that of commercial publishing into the world of official European publications. Publications Office offers a significant opportunity for the DOI to bring the benefit of its managed information approach to EU publications. We expect to announce further appointments of agencies in other government document sectors, complementing these existing agencies."

Publications Office and the International DOI Foundation reached agreement on the appointment of Publications Office as a DOI Registration Agency in August of this year, since when Publications Office has been developing its infrastructure and operational facilities for this role: it expects to assign DOIs in the first quarter of 2005.

Publications Office (http://www.publications.eu.int/) produces, publishes and distributes publications of all institutions and agencies and publishes in the 20 official languages of the European Union.

In addition, the Office has been successfully operating as an official specialised agency for both ISBN and ISSN, and will continue to do so for the benefit of the 112 authoring services of the European Union and that of the book community.

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.

From the Press Release Archive:

• IDF Press Release, 2 August 2004: "DOIs to be assigned to all European Union Publications"

For further information:

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