Versioning

DOI Versioning @figshare

A very popular feature request has been the ability to directly cite versions of a figshare article by using versioned DOIs. This will be in place shortly, with the current DOI structure being maintained:

http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1237550

If a figshare has more than one version, the following DOIs will be created:

http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1237550.v1

http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1237550.v5

When more than 1 version exists, the original DOI will still apply and will always take the user to the latest version.

This approach has a problem of inconsistency of meaning of the DOI:

• DOI is a persistent link to a dataset. A researcher learns to rely on this: the link in citation will take me to the very data or tool used for the experiment. I can replicate it.
• Once the resource gets a new version the DOI starts working differently. The DOI without a suffix, if it was used in a citation, now leads to a different data, if the resource has more versions. So the researcher must check, if using a DOI without a suffix, if the resource has more versions. If so, the versione cited is now not the one with the doi from the citation, but theDOI.v1

Versioning dynamic resources (data or software)

• Use VCS
• PID per resource
• PIDs for versions as required (mostly for citation and "safekeeping" of important versions) by authors
  • versions that for some reason should have metadata: used in a paper, used for a released (linked) dataset, etc.
• Github Releases
• tagged revisions