ISBN, ISSN, and DOI

You probably know ISBN, which identifies a specific edition of a book. But do you know what ISSN and DOI are? Similar to the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) for books, the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an identifier for serials and other continuing resources. For example, the online ISSN of the Journal of Business Logistics is 2158-1592. A digital object identifier (DOI) can be used to uniquely identify content objects in the digital environment, i.e. journal articles. A DOI can be resolved by entering it into a text box on the page http://dx.doi.org/ or by extending this URL: For instance, the page http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/259056 will redirect to the paper with the DOI 10.2307/259056. By the way, whenever I link to a book in this blog, I will extend the Wikipedia special page for book sources by the ISBN, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0136080405. This enables you to select your preferred bookseller rather than having Amazon pre-selected.