4. Minting the instrument DOI

DataCite Fabrica is the web interface to create and manage your DOIs and metadata. Your organization needs to be a DataCite member or work with a DataCite member. This will provide you with your own DOI prefix and the credentials to sign in to Fabrica.

There are basically three different options to create a new or update an existing DOI that we describe in the following.

4.1. Create the DOI using the web form

The most interactive way of creating a DOI is to fill a web formular, indicating the DOI, the URL of the landingpage, and all of the metadata values. It provides useful assistence, such as automated validation or lookup of external identifiers while entering the values. See the DataCite documentation for detailed instructions.

4.2. Create the DOI using file upload

If you want to create many instrument DOIs, manually entering all the metadata values separately may become tedious. There is another web formular that allows the metadata to be uploaded as a file. Different file formats are supported, but the most fine grained control over the properties and their values is propably achieved using DataCite XML. See the DataCite documentation for detailed instructions.

4.3. Use the DataCite REST API

The process of creating the DOIs can be fully automated using the DataCite REST API. The metadata may be feed into the API as JSON or DataCite XML. See the DataCite REST API Guide for details.