A comparison between the ARK system and the DOI makes their contrasting design logics unmistakably clear. ARK is built on the principle that knowledge should function as a public good—freely accessible, non-proprietary, and unencumbered by financial barriers. By eliminating fees and enabling unrestricted use, ARK directly challenges the DOI system’s entanglement with commercial interests and its role in facilitating the commodification of knowledge. Where the DOI embeds market logics into the very infrastructure of scholarly communication, ARK offers a fundamentally different model—one that resists the monetization of access and reaffirms the value of open, community-governed knowledge systems.
