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The purpose of the DOI Kernel is to allow:

•recognition
Recognition in this context means that the Kernel metadata should be sufficient to show clearly what kind of thing which is the DOI referent (by various classifications), and allow a user to identify with reasonable accuracy the particular thing (by various names, identifiers and relationships). These two are complementary, for it is possible to know that something is (for example) a movie or a DVD without knowing that it is "Casablanca", and vice versa. Recognition is required for the discovery of referents, and also to provide information to a user when a referent is discovered, whether by intent or accident. The user of metadata may be a person or a machine. The structure of the Kernel is often but not always sufficient to provide a unique description of a referent (disambiguation), and further specialized metadata elements may be required in some cases. A unique description can in fact always be achieved by adding additional descriptive text to a referent, but this is not a satisfactory way if the additional text is being used in place of a formal classification, measurement, identifier, time or other structured contextual metadata, as it undermines the second goal of interoperability.

•interoperability
Interoperability in this context means that Kernel metadata from different DOI Registration Agencies may be combined or queried by the same software without requiring semantic mapping or transformation. Interoperability is achieved when data elements or their values are common to diverse metadata schemas. The Kernel provides this directly by mandating a common set of core elements and classifications, but this of course supports only limited interoperability.