Guide
Getting a Zenodo DOI for an article or field note
Page updated
The essentials
Zenodo, CERN’s open archive, assigns a DOI to anything you deposit: an article, a preprint, a dataset, a field note. Prepare a title, an abstract, your co-authors with their ORCID and a license, upload the file and publish: the DOI is permanent and your work becomes citable.
What a DOI is, and why Zenodo
A DOI is a permanent identifier: it always points to your work, even if its address changes. Zenodo, run by CERN, registers its DOIs with DataCite and passes the metadata on to scholarly aggregators. It is a solid option for a field note, a report or a preprint.
What to prepare
- A clear title and abstract.
- The authors, with their ORCID and affiliation.
- A license: Creative Commons (CC BY, CC BY-SA…) to allow reuse.
- The file: a readable PDF and, if possible, the source (Markdown, data).
- Keywords and, where relevant, related works.
Depositing on Zenodo, step by step
Create an account
Sign in to Zenodo, for example with your ORCID.
New upload
Add your files, then choose the resource type (publication, preprint, report…).
Fill in the metadata
Title, authors, abstract, license, keywords. They make the deposit findable and citable.
Publish
The DOI is minted on publication. Check everything first: you don’t replace the files of a published record, you create a new version.
From nTilia, in one click
From Pro, the editor menu sends an article published under a Creative Commons license to Zenodo: preprint PDF and Markdown source. The DOI (prefix 10.5281) comes back in the frontmatter, the Cite block, the APA, BibTeX, RIS and JATS exports, and the JSON-LD.
Frequently asked questions
Is getting a DOI on Zenodo free?
Yes, depositing on Zenodo and getting a DOI costs nothing. In nTilia, one-click deposit is included from Pro.
Can I change a record after publishing?
Some metadata can be corrected, but files can’t be replaced: you publish a new version, with its own DOI.
Can a field note get a DOI?
Yes. Zenodo accepts any kind of research output: article, report, dataset, note. The DOI makes it citable like any publication.
Sources
Free · No credit card · Works offline