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The DOI® (Digital Object Identifier) System originated in a joint initiative of three trade associations in the publishing industry (International Publishers Association; International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers; Association of American Publishers). Although originating in text publishing, the DOI System was conceived as a generic framework for managing identification of content over digital networks, recognizing the trend towards digital convergence and multimedia availability. The system was announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair 1997. In the same year, the DOI Foundation was created to develop and manage the DOI System.

From its inception the DOI Foundation worked with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) as a technical partner, using the Handle System® developed by CNRI as the digital network component of the DOI System. CNRI remains a technical partner of the DOI Foundation as the DOI technical support service provider.

From 1998 the Foundation worked closely with the INDECS project (1998-2000) and a number of subsequent and continuing initiatives building on this. The INDECS framework underpins the DOI data model.

The DOI System provides a technical and social infrastructure on which organizations can build applications to provide services to users or communities of users. For example, the DOI System is used in internal processes in multiple industries, for publishing and reporting across corporate and national boundaries, and in the field of semantic web applications.

Because of the widespread implementation of the DOI System, the DOI Foundation was invited to propose it as an ISO standard. ISO 26324 was published in 2012 and updated in 2022. The ISO standard specifies the syntax and operation of the DOI while leaving implementation issues to the Foundation, which acts as registration authority for the standard. Note that the DOI Syntax was originally a National Information Standards Organization (US) standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.84-2010, first published in 2000 and withdrawn in 2017.