Most scholarly publishers (science, tech and medical) participate in CrossRef initiative (crossref.org). This initiative makes it especially easy to cite electronic articles. The publisher registers a unique persistent DOI for each article with CrossRef and thus this DOI is used to cite the article be it printed or electronic.
Since publishers register DOIs as soon as the electronic version of the article is available online, the article is citable using DOI way before the print journal goes to press. And since the DOIs are persistent, links will work even if the journal changes ownership/publisher.
In addition to providing free DOI resolution, CrossRef also provides a free metadata lookup for libraries (or it will provide it for free soon I think). Libraries will be able to lookup DOIs using article metadata as needed.
Many publishers also participate in variety of archive initiatives, where a copy of every electronic article is made available in large or national libraries for safekeeping. In case the publisher goes out of business, the library or institution has the authority to make the stored archive available to public. With persistent DOIs this will be very easy since the existing links will not break even if the servers are different.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the days, most prompt jockeys would just laugh about this new "mouse" thing. Mouse is just a fad, etc..
Since publishers register DOIs as soon as the electronic version of the article is available online, the article is citable using DOI way before the print journal goes to press. And since the DOIs are persistent, links will work even if the journal changes ownership/publisher.
In addition to providing free DOI resolution, CrossRef also provides a free metadata lookup for libraries (or it will provide it for free soon I think). Libraries will be able to lookup DOIs using article metadata as needed.
Many publishers also participate in variety of archive initiatives, where a copy of every electronic article is made available in large or national libraries for safekeeping. In case the publisher goes out of business, the library or institution has the authority to make the stored archive available to public. With persistent DOIs this will be very easy since the existing links will not break even if the servers are different.