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The International DOI Foundation has re-affirmed its primary purpose of promoting the widest possible distribution and use of DOIs and the DOI System and ensuring that the DOI remains an open standard and system available to all who wish to adopt it. The IDF committed at its latest Board meeting to adopting a policy on Intellectual Property rights associated with the DOI system, in order to provide clarity and assurance to users of the DOI System.

The key feature of the IDF Policy is that the IDF, as governance body of the DOI system, safeguards (owns or licences on behalf of registrants) all Intellectual Property Rights relating to the DOI System. It works with RAs and with the underlying technical standards of the DOI components to ensure that any improvements made to the DOI system (including creation, maintenance, registration, resolution and policymaking of DOIs) are available to any DOI registrant. DOI resolution is of course already freely available to any user encountering a DOI.

The IDF and its members put considerable effort and resources into continuing development of the DOI System, and so the International DOI Foundation recognizes that (as with standards bodies in other spheres) it must take adequate measures to preserve, protect and enhance its operating processes to encourage its Members to improve and expand the DOI System and to enjoy the benefits of those efforts, while at the same time encouraging the continuing development and use of DOI-based technologies among DOI registrants in pursuing such infrastructure development.

Further announcements will follow: for more information, contact n.paskin@doi.org.

Building on their existing membership in the IDF, representing 43 library members from 41 European countries, the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) has been nominated unanimously to a position on the Board of the International DOI Foundation. Johan Steenbakkers, Director of IT and Facilities at the National Library of the Netherlands, accepted the three year term, running to mid 2007, on behalf of CENL at the last IDF Board meeting. CENL currently has a Task Force on Persistent Identifiers which has reviewed DOI and related technologies. Robert Bolick, chairman of the IDF, commented: "this further addition to the Board, representing another sector of the information chain, marks an important evolution in the governance of the DOI as an open standard responsive to all users and providers of information in the digital environment."

The IDF Board consists of 14 seats representing a wide range of constituencies, both DOI Registration Agencies and supporting Charter and General members.

For further information see the earlier IDF press release: "National Library participation in DOI Foundation extends to 41 countries through CENL"; and Gabriel, the World Wide Web service of Europe's National Libraries represented in the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL).

For a list of IDF members and Board members, see the IDF Member List.

EPS, a London-based consultancy providing strategic assistance to publishers and other content providers, has published a white paper documenting the business case for use of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) within the value chain of content distribution, syndication and online partnering. The study is the second in a series analyzing the economic benefits of the DOI. The first white paper documented a 12-to-1 payback for use of the DOI in publishers' e-commerce operations, consisting of both revenue enhancement and cost-savings/cost-avoidance by using the DOI to improve content discoverability (including search engine marketing), publisher website usability/navigation, Web merchandising, and website maintenance. Both studies were funded by Content Directions, Inc. (CDI) but involved independent data-gathering and analysis of customer data from CDI customers, as well as quantitative data from other non-CDI-customers throughout the publishing value chain.

For more information see the CDI press release.

Nature Publishing Group has announced the launch of its newest collection of RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) feed functionality delivering tables of content for its journals and other timely information to scientists' desktops. All Nature-branded journals in the life sciences now have associated RSS newsfeeds with rich metadata, while other Nature-branded and NPG titles are soon to follow. Linking to the article full text is effected using industry-standard mechanisms for persistent linking: DOI and CrossRef.

For more information, see the Nature Publishing Group page "What is a newsfeed?".