DOI Registration Agencies Compared: Which One Should Your Journal Use?

Only a registration agency appointed by the DOI Foundation can issue DOIs. Each agency serves a different community, and picking the wrong one is a common, costly mistake. Here’s who does what, and which one fits your journal.

The short answer

For a scholarly journal, choose Crossref. It’s built for journals and books, OJS supports it out of the box, and it’s what authors, indexes and citation tools expect. Use DataCite for research data, theses and repository content. See What is Crossref and why your journal needs DOIs.

The main agencies

Agency	Mainly for	Good fit for a journal?
Crossref	Journals, books, conference papers, preprints, grants	Yes, the standard choice
DataCite	Research data, software, theses, repository items	Sometimes, if your university already has DataCite access
mEDRA	Publishers, mostly in Europe	Possible; OJS supports it
JaLC	Japanese content	For journals published in Japan
KISTI	Korean content	For journals published in Korea
CNKI, Airiti	Chinese-language content	For publishers in China and Taiwan
EIDR	Film and TV	No

The DOI Foundation keeps the full list of registration agencies.

Repositories that give DOIs

Zenodo, Figshare, OSF and similar repositories aren’t agencies themselves. They register DataCite DOIs for the files you upload to them, which is how individual researchers get a DOI without joining anything. It works, with limits: see getting a DOI from Zenodo.

How to choose

• You publish a journal, a book series or proceedings: Crossref.
• You run an institutional repository or publish data: DataCite, often through your university or a national consortium.
• You’re an individual author depositing a preprint or dataset: a repository such as Zenodo.
• Your country has its own agency and your audience is local: check that agency, but Crossref still gives the widest reach.

A DOI is tied to the agency that registered it. Moving a journal’s DOIs from one agency to another is possible but slow, so choose carefully the first time.

Costs are compared in which DOI providers charge, and how much.

This guide is independent and isn’t endorsed by Crossref, DataCite, Zenodo or the DOI Foundation. Fees, rules and screens are theirs to change: the details here were checked in October 2026, so confirm them on the official site before you budget or apply.

Questions

Is Crossref better than DataCite?

Neither is better overall; they serve different content. Crossref is designed for journals and books, DataCite for data and repository items. For a journal, Crossref is usually the right choice.

Can one journal use two agencies?

Each DOI belongs to one agency. A journal normally registers all its articles with one agency, though a university might use DataCite for its repository and Crossref for its journals.

Does OJS work with every agency?

OJS supports Crossref, DataCite and mEDRA out of the box. See DOI options in OJS.