Versions of journal articles : recent initiatives

Frances Shipsey, VERSIONS Project

Discovery and Access : Standards and the Information Chain

(JISC, ALPSP, Publishers Association, CrossRef) Bonhill House, London, 7 December 2006

7 December 2006 / 2

Four recent initiatives on versioning

• NISO/ALPSP Working Group on Versions of Journal Articles

• VERSIONS Project • Scoping Study on Repository Version Identification

(RIVER)• Eprints Application Profile Working Group

7 December 2006 / 3

NISO/ALPSP Working Group on Versions of Journal Articles

• Journal Article Versions Technical Working Group (JAVTechWG) and Review Group (JAVReview) made up of publishers, librarians and other stakeholders (Chair: Cliff Morgan, John Wiley & Sons)http://www.niso.org/committees/Journal_versioning/JournalVer_comm.html

• Draft documents issued for review in March 2006• Use Cases• Terms and Definitions• JAV Relationships Diagram

• Documents currently undergoing revision in light of responses from the JAV Review Group (as at November 2006)

7 December 2006 / 4

NISO/ALPSP Working Group Terms and Definitions (draft) – March 2006

• Author’s Original• ‘A version of a journal article that is considered by the author to be of

sufficient quality to be submitted for review by a second party. […]’• Accepted Manuscript

• ‘The version of a journal article that has been accepted for publication in a journal. […]’

• Proof• ‘A version of a journal article that is created as part of the publication process.

[…]’• Version of Record

• ‘A version of a journal article that has been made available by any organization that acts as a publisher by declaring the article “fit for publication” (ie the publisher). […]’

• Updated Version of Record• ‘A version of the Version of Record of a journal article that has been amended

in some way. […]’

http://www.niso.org/committees/Journal_versioning/TermsandDefinitionsdraft2006.pdf

7 December 2006 / 5

NISO/ALPSP Working Group - Relationships

http://www.niso.org/committees/Journal_versioning/JAVrelationshipsdiagram.pdf

7 December 2006 / 6

The VERSIONS Project

• VERSIONS : Versions of Eprints – user Requirements Study and Investigation of the Need for Standards

• Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) under the Digital Repositories Programme

• London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) - lead partner

• Nereus – consortium of European research libraries specialising in economics – associate partner

• Runs from July 2005 to February 2007• www.lse.ac.uk/versions

7 December 2006 / 7

Multiple versions – experience of readers

Q22. When searching, how frequently do you find more than one full text version / copy available online?

17%

37%

39%

5% 2%

Very frequently

Frequently

Sometimes

Never

Don't know

7 December 2006 / 8

Differentiating between multiple versions

Q23. If you find multiple versions and / or copies of the same work, is it generally quick and easy to establish

which one(s) you wish to read?

54%41%

5%

Yes

No

Do not find multipleversions / copies

7 December 2006 / 9

How are versions handled in open access repositories?

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

Within singlerepositories

Across multipleopen accessrepositories

Throughinternet search

engines

Stakeholder Questions 4-6: How well do you feel that versions of academic papers are currently identified ...

Don't know

Very badly

Quite badly

Quite well

Very well

7 December 2006 / 10

Identifying versions – researchers’ prioritiesQ no Question Essential or very

importantEssential, very important, or interesting

Essential

Q34 A method of indicating which is the published version 88.13% 98.23% 43.69%

Q35 A method of indicating which is the author's latest version of a paper

80.41% 95.62% 30.41%

Q28 A standardised way of recording and displaying the date of manuscript completion

67.59% 92.71% 22.36%

Q30 A standardised note in the description of the paper stating that it is the latest revision available

57.00% 82.19% 16.28%

Q26 A standardised terminology to describe each stage in the process of developing a research output

50.60% 91.33% 9.16%

Q29 A standardised way of referring to different revisions by version number

45.90% 85.13% 11.54%

Q32 A method of linking records together so all versions of a given paper are retrieved by searches and presented as a group (collocation):

41.69% 81.84% 6.91%

Q27 A standardised terminology to describe how one version relates to another (for example B is a digital copy of A, C is a digital revision of A):

41.69% 88.83% 6.70%

Q33 A method of comparing the text of different versions and displaying the differences between them

38.50% 79.07% 5.68%

Q31 Notes provided by the author, describing how one version relates to another

37.72% 84.81% 4.56%

7 December 2006 / 11

ArXiv – versions linked through metadata

7 December 2006 / 12

Scoping Study on Repository Version Identification (RIVER)

• Led by Rightscom Ltd with partners London School of Economics and Political Science Library, University of Oxford Computing Services

• Final report to JISC Scholarly Communications Group, March 2006 http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/RIVER%20Final

%20Report.pdf

7 December 2006 / 13

RIVER

• Defined two broad classes of requirement for version identification:

• Collocation• Disambiguation

– ‘Identifying that two digital objects which happen to share certain attributes […] have no contextually meaningful relationship’

– ‘Understanding the meaning of the relationship between two digital objects where one exists [without inspecting and comparing the objects themselves]’

• Defined a tentative typology of ‘versions’ covering both time-based version relationships and others

7 December 2006 / 14

RIVER - recommendations

• Recommendations to JISC for further work:• More detailed survey into development plans for repositories and

awareness of versioning• Research definitive sets of version identification requirements• Produce a more robust set of taxonomies from tentative and draft

versions• Develop framework policies for use by institutions and for

interoperability

• Recommendations to universities (institutional repository managers)

• Develop IR policy on version identification• Develop guidance for users (both depositing authors and searchers)• Consider instituting workflow-based version management in IR• Consider needs for access to repository content through search

engines – eg, ‘staging page’ carrying unambiguous version metadata

7 December 2006 / 15

Eprints Application Profile Working Group

• Carried out within JISC Digital Repositories Programme, led by Julie Allinson (UKOLN) and Andy Powell (Eduserv Foundation)

• Approach based on FRBR and the DCMI Abstract Model• Provides more detail and structure than simple Dublin Core• FRBR approach allows for representation of relationships between

versions• Work carried out June-August 2006 with follow up to take place

through a DC Task Group

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Eprints_Application_Profile

7 December 2006 / 16

FRBR – a hierarchical model

• Work – expression – manifestation - item• ‘On a practical level, the degree to which bibliographic

distinctions are made between variant expressions of a work will depend to some extent on the nature of the work itself, and on the anticipated needs of users.’Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Final Report. IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. Approved by the Standing Committee of the IFLA Section on Cataloguing. K.G.Saur, München 1998

UBCIM Publications – New Series Vol 19. http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf

7 December 2006 / 17

Eprint model – Eprints Application Profile Working Group

Eprint Model

                                                                                                                                                                 

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/Model

7 December 2006 / 18

CCLRC - ePubs repository – collocation and disambiguation

Thank you!

f.m.shipsey@lse.ac.uk