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The Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) maintains a persistent URL for each DOI. Example: http://dx.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06849. However, the link often points to some pay-walled article, even when it is freely accessible somewhere else. Is there any alternative service that maintains a persistent URL for each DOI, which points to a open access article whenever possible?

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  • This doesn't answer your question, but in practice Google Scholar does a good job of linking to freely available versions.
    – David Ketcheson
    Apr 10, 2016 at 9:09
  • @DavidKetcheson Thanks, I indeed typically link to it. But Google has a notorious history of killing its services.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Apr 10, 2016 at 14:58

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I'm not completely sure what you mean by "maintains a persistent URL for each DOI" - the point of a DOI is that it is the persistent identifier and the underlying resource can be shifted around as needed.

But answering the question...

Why, yes, there is - doai.io

This takes the DOI, looks for an OA version (loosely defined), redirects to that if found, and falls back on the original DOI target URL if nothing is available.

Two examples from a randomly chosen issue of Nature last year:

doi:10.1038/nature14178 > http://doai.io/10.1038/nature14178 - no OA version so falls back on Nature, the original DOI target

doi:10.1038/nature14260 > http://doai.io/10.1038/nature14260 - OA version available on PMC, so directs the reader there

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A new open access DOI resolver was launched this week: http://oadoi.org/

It claims to be "an improved version of the ingenious http://doai.io/". The development documentation provides a bit more explanation but is still in the process of being written.

Example:

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