When citing media that you either uploaded or accessed in a published work, it is best practice to use a DOI (in addition to any other requirements stipulated by the use agreement or museum stakeholders).

However, media do not automatically receive a DOI upon creation.  Therefore, users will often need to request assignment of DOI.

If you need a DOI, please do the following:

1) make a list with the URLs or ARK ids of all media you need a DOI for

2) Send an email to "morphosource@duke.edu" requesting DOI assignment and provide the list. 

MorphoSource will then review your request.  After determining that the quality of the media meets a basic standard, DOIs will be minted for you. We will let you know when this process is completed.

Time frame for minting

Depending on the number of media requiring a new DOI, prepare to wait between a day and week.  This process takes time because, we do a cursory quality check of the media (see checklist below).  If we find that there are issues with your media, we may require your assistance in revising the deposits.  Thus, your responsiveness to our queries will sometimes affect the turnaround time.

What if it is not my data?

You can request DOIs for media that are not yours. We will handle any permissions that must be discussed with the Data Manager or other stakeholders.

MorphoSource Checklist for DOI assignment (Users may be contacted about any of the issues below even if they have not requested DOIs)

Note that we do a quality and format check on media before assigning DOIs.  You can find that checklist here.