New guidance: How to use DOIs in your referencing

Learn how to reference with DOIs with our new guidance.

The University of Leeds referencing policy has changed how we reference certain sources using the Leeds Havard and Leeds Numeric styles. When referencing books, conference papers, datasets and journal articles you must now include Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) where they’re available.

DOIs are unique numbers that can be assigned to objects such as books and journal articles. They allow these objects to be reliably and persistently identified and tracked, offering more security than URLs, which are at risk of “breaking” or becoming obsolete as publishers update their websites. 

The changes come to the University’s policy as the use of DOIs has become common practice in academic journal publishing across all disciplines and the number of students enquiring about the subject has steadily increased.  

To answer your questions, we’ve updated our comprehensive referencing guidance. It now includes how and where to include DOIs when referencing books, conference papers, datasets and journal articles. You’ll find multiple examples, to make your referencing process straightforward and understandable. 

We’ve also updated our EndNote output styles, for both Leeds Havard and Leeds Numeric referencing, to include DOIs for the relevant sources.