SSRN is currently experimenting with assigning Preprint DOIs to selected papers on SSRN.

DOIs are Digital Object Identifiers assigned to each new published paper that appears in any journal. DOIs are permanent IDs that always lead to the same result, making it easy to find, link and cite published articles. DOIs are managed by Crossref, a not-for-profit membership organisation.

Currently, most articles on SSRN are assigned a generic DOI in the same way most academic journal DOIs are minted. In fact, SSRN was one of the first non-publisher entities to be allowed to mint DOIs.

Late last year SSRN began testing a new preprint DOI on a small subgroup of papers – those being published via our First Look journal partnerships.

These new preprint DOIs identify a paper as a preprint, and enable some additional metadata fields which allows the preprint to be more easily linked to any later published version.

This is an exciting development for preprint articles and for SSRN. Preprint DOIs can be used to help label preprints as a step on the way to publication in a peer-reviewed article, and means they can be more easily linked to the article’s version of record (VoR). This will help SSRN’s users to keep up to date with academic research and its progression.

What kind of DOI do you think makes sense for your research? Let us know in the comments below, and we look forward to sharing more information on our preprint DOI pilot as the experiment progresses.

You can learn more about DOIs at Crossref, which manages the technology and standards to enable DOIs to be assigned.