A DOI is an abbreviation for "Digital Object Identifier". If a journal assigns DOI to its published articles it gives authenticity to a journal. DOI ensure the international standardization of scholarly article/research paper. It helps scholars to easily locate the research paper from your citation, as it always refers to an article/published paper, and only that one, which in turn increase the acceptance of scholarly data as authorized, lawful and citable material.

A DOI aims to be "resolvable", usually to some form of access to the information object to which the DOI refers. This is achieved by binding the DOI to metadata about the object, such as a URL, indicating where the object can be found. Thus, by being actionable and interoperable, a DOI differs from identifiers such as ISBNs and ISRCs which aim only to identify their referents uniquely. The DOI for a document remains fixed over the lifetime of the document, whereas its location and other metadata may change.

Developed by a group of international publishers, the DOI System provides a way to guarantee that digital copies of articles can remain accessible even if a journal changes its domain name or ceases publishing. DOIs are assigned and maintained by registration agencies such as CrossRef, which provides citation-linking services for scientific publishers.

Benefits of DOI:

• It’s a persistent identifier or handle used to identify objects uniquely, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
• Automated link from DOI to any (and multiple) data.
• Build your own custom features: entirely extensible architecture
• Generic applicability; any form of intellectual property, any granularity
• Ensure interoperability
• Using existing standards
• Ensure long term use
• The DOI system uses the indecs Content Model for representing metadata.
• DOIs identify content permanently.

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Citations count plays important role in evaluating the importance of published research, so citations to published work matters to all the authors. DOI make sure that each published article get it's unique identify and can be cited easily, which increase the visibility of published work.

So as an author you need to make sure that you publish your research in journal, which provides DOI.

Don’t waste efforts in publishing without DOI. Get proper indexation and citation to the article by publishing it with a journal that is assigning DOI to your work.