A DOI is a digital identifier of an object, any object — physical, digital, or abstract. DOIs solve a common problem: keeping track of things. Things can be matter, material, content, or activities.
A DOI is a unique number made up of a prefix and a suffix separated by a forward slash. This is an example of one: 10.1000/182. It is resolvable using our proxy server by displaying it as a link: https://doi.org/10.1000/182.
Designed to be used by humans as well as machines, DOIs identify objects persistently. They allow things to be uniquely identified and accessed reliably. You know what you have, where it is, and others can track it too.