Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs, are persistent identifiers that, when assigned to a digital object, bind that object to a set of metadata that, among other things, gives information about the current location of the object on the web. Through this technology, DOIs provide stable access over time to digital objects, such as article PDFs.

In addition to providing the metadata infrastructure for linking to digital objects, DOI administrative agencies, known as registrars, also provide a service that captures data about online events targeting digital objects associated with DOIs. For example, when a law review article cites to another article that has a DOI associated with it, the registrar captures that citation “event” and preserves the data associated with it, such as a date for when the citation occurred and information about the article where the citation originated from.

DOI registrars, such as Crossref, make DOI Event Data accessible through an API that researchers can utilize for bibliometric analyses. Using DOI Event Data as the source of bibliometric analysis offers a game-changing solution for determining the use, influence, and broader impact of a variety of scholarly outputs without the limitations imposed by current methodologies, which manually count citations in legal databases.

This session will define DOI Event Data and demonstrate the process for obtaining the data and making sense of it. The demo will showcase Event Data from the Texas A&M Law Review.