Versions of academic papers : current practice and attitudes of economics researchers towards creating and storing digital versions Frances Shipsey, VERSIONS Project, London School of Economics and Political Science 2nd International Digital Curation Conference, November 2006, Glasgow

21 November 2006 / 2 Versions and digital curation What has the question of version control or version identification to do with digital repositories and digital curation? How many versions are authors needing to manage? Have authors kept their papers? – If not, what are the reasons for loss? If they have kept their papers, can they find them again when needed (eg for deposit in a repository)? What are authors’ views about responsibility for the long term storage of their research outputs? How do authors deal with citing papers in the face of change, in a discipline with a strong pre-print tradition? The VERSIONS Project asked authors about these issues Survey in summer 2006 – 464 responses from researchers, (75% of which were economics researchers)

21 November 2006 / 3 Pre-print culture in economics – wide dissemination through different channels

21 November 2006 / 4 Which versions do researchers keep? VERSIONS survey of researchers Q5. Thinking about revisions you make to your research outputs during their preparation, which revisions do you personally keep / plan to keep stored in electronic form (eg on your computer or network drive) at the end of the process?

21 November 2006 / 5 Permanent storage by authors of multiple versions of their journal articles VERSIONS survey of researchers Q7: ‘Which of the following versions of a paper, that you have written for publication in a refereed journal, would you personally keep (eg on your own computer or network drive)?’ Revision stagePercentage of respondents who keep this stage permanently Number of respondents who keep this stage permanently Early draft version(s) before circulating to anyone, other than co- authors 39.9%185 Draft version circulated to colleagues or peers for feedback before submission 53.9%250 Version submitted to a journal for peer review78.9%366 Final author version produced by yourself/co-authors – agreed with the journal following referee comments 90.7%421 Proof copy (publisher-produced version)62.5%290 Final published version (publisher-produced PDF)91.8%426

21 November 2006 / 6 Easily accessible final author versions VERSIONS survey of researchers Q8. Thinking about storing your academic papers in the long term and focussing on 'final author versions' of your papers, do you have an easily accessible copy of these among your personal files (electronic or paper)? 58% have all, and 36% have most of these versions easily accessible

21 November 2006 / 7 Reasons for not having easy access to own final author versions ReasonNumber of respondents % of total respondents to this question (156) who gave this reason % of all survey respondents I do not have electronic copies before a certain date9057.7%19.4% I do not have copies produced while I was at a previous university/institution %4.1% I do not have copies of papers that I co-authored, the principal / lead investigator has this version %5.6% Changes to the manuscript are made iteratively between myself and the publisher in the later stages so I would have to assemble such a version %5.2% Loss or damage to my computer2918.6%6.3% Papers are stored electronically but would be difficult to retrieve from various servers %6.5% Loss or damage to paper files117.1%2.4% I have discarded print copies of older papers before a certain date and do not have electronic versions %3.7% Other1912.2%4.1%

21 November 2006 / 8 Responsibility for secure storage of different versions Authors/ Co- authors Authors' universities (including libraries) PublishersSubject repositories Early draft version(s) before circulation Draft version circulated for feedback Submitted version Final accepted version Proof (publisher's) Published version None of these Don't know

21 November 2006 / 9 Citing versions in the face of change

21 November 2006 / 10 Free text comments on citing earlier versions A large number of free text comments were made which clarified respondents views on a range of issues, eg: The wish to cite a reliable version that will remain accessible The need to take the time to check published version before citing it to make sure the relevant paragraph was not cut or that the argument was not substantially changed Citation of both versions if differences in the content merit this Actively seeking to provide a citation to an open access copy Actively seeking to cite published journal article version out of courtesy to the cited author

21 November 2006 / 11 Other projects and initiatives on versions Ongoing standards development work - NISO/ALPSP Working Group on Versions of Journal Articles Two JISC activities during RIVER – Scoping Study on Repository Version Identification JISC Eprints Application Profile Working Group

21 November 2006 / 12 NISO/ALPSP Working Group on Versions of Journal Articles Publisher-led group, with larger review group made up of publishers, librarians and other stakeholders Detailed use cases developed on the workflow from submission to publication and beyond Draft documents including Terms and Definitions for versions (March 2006) – Author’s Original – Accepted Manuscript – Proof – Version of Record – Updated Version of Record

21 November 2006 / 13 RIVER – 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 Report to JISC Scholarly Communications Group, March 2006 at: 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

21 November 2006 / 14 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

21 November 2006 / 15 JISC Eprints Application Profile Working Group Carried out within JISC Digital Repositories Programme Approach based on FRBR (work – expression – manifestation – item) and the DCMI Abstract Model Provides more detail and structure than simple Dublin Core Deals with versions very well Work carried out June-August 2006 with follow up to take place through a DC Task Group

21 November 2006 / 16 To finish … an illustration Version identification is not a new problem, nor a problem limited to curation of digital objects only Higher criticism - focuses on the sources of a document and tries to determine the authorship, date and place of composition of the text Textual criticism – concerned with the identification and removal of errors from texts Ulysses family tree – illustrates both of these

21 November 2006 / 17 Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Ireland and X Communications

21 November 2006 / 18 Looking forward – some issues Inform academic authors about the need for personal information management strategies – keep everything vs keeping milestone versions – Idea of granularity reduction – could a tool be developed that could support authors – (Kjetil Nørväg (2006), Granularity reduction in temporal document databases, Information systems 31 (2), DOI: /j.is ) Institutional policies on digital preservation to consider which individuals or institutions (if any) should take responsibility for long term storage of multiple versions The wish to cite multiple versions of a work may increase - – FRBR-isation of repositories and search services could help – International Standard Text Code available as a Draft International Standard (DIS 21047) if this progresses further it could be a very interesting way to maintain relationships between versions into the future

21 November 2006 / 19 The VERSIONS Project VERSIONS : Versions of Eprints – user Requirements Study and Investigation of the Need for Standards Funder: Joint Information Systems Committee Partners: London School of Economics and Political Science (lead) and Nereus (associate partner) Survey of researchers conducted in summer 2006 Project runs until February 2007 Thank you