Preprints, post-prints and author manuscripts

It is common practice to assign a new DOI to different versions of a resource. For example, a new DOI might be assigned to pre-prints or green open access versions of journal articles that already have Crossref DOIs.

Suggested best practice is to search for the Crossref and DataCite databases to see if the DOI already exists. The relationship between the Crossref DOI and the DataCite DOI can be documented in metadata using the "relatedIdentifier" metadata field, normally with the isVersionOf relationType.

More information about versioning.