Versioning Notes?

[sebastiank...@u.northwestern.edu]

Hi everyone,

while the Versions table does provide a summary of changes, it doesn't contain any information on the occasion/reason for a version change (new data? major error in the data? small  typo? format update for preservation?), nor is there as far as I know an obvious place for such info.

Does anyone have a standard practice for versioning notes in Dataverse (and maybe even a link to a relevant record?)? Is there something in DDI?
We're thinking the "notes" field makes most sense, but also wanted to standardize.

Thanks!

Sebastian

[Julian Gautier]

Hi Sebastian,

I agree, there are no fields that ship with the Dataverse software just for versioning notes. Before v4 of the software there used to be a way for depositors or curators to add version notes like you described. There are still remnants of this in the Harvard Dataverse Repository database. DDI Codebook has an element called verStmt that the Dataverse software mapped to its versioning notes field. I looked around but couldn't find any discussion from back then about why that field was removed. Maybe Sonia or the folks from Odum might know why.

I don't recall seeing any current Dataverse repository/installations creating a field just for versioning notes, though it's been about 6 months since I checked out the fields that repositories are using.

The DataCite schema has a way to include a description of version changes, too, if the software were to add a field for that and wanted to include version notes in that export.

[Sebastian Karcher]

Thanks Julian, the references to the DataCite & DDI fields (as well as the history) are super useful. We would definitely be interested in this, FWIW.

We might even consider doing this locally, but it's obviously always better to make such changes upstream so metadata schemas are aligned.

Sebastian

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Sebastian Karcher, PhD
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[Philip Durbin]

Hi Sebastian,

Thanks for creating https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/8431 about version notes. The conversation can certainly continue there (and here) but to follow up on what Julian was saying, DVN 3.x indeed showed a popup on publish with a place to type a note. In those days datasets were called studies and you can see "Add comments or a brief description in the Study Version Notes popup" under "Release Studies" in the DVN 3.x guides at https://guides.dataverse.org/en/3.6.2/dataverse-user-main.html#manage-studies

As far as why the version notes feature was dropped in Dataverse 4.0, I think some people found it annoying, an extra hurdle that doesn't always provide value. To be honest, I can't remember if the note was required or if it could be left blank. My gut says it was required because I seem to remember being annoyed by it in dev. :)

There's an old 4.0 design doc* that refers to "the burdensome process of creating a whole new version" with a comment that says, "I don't know. It seems like a relatively lightweight process to me. Unless they don't like filling out the text box. Could the notes field be autopopulated with a text-based list of the results of the "diff" (a la question 3)?"

Suffice it to say that if we do reintroduce version notes they should probably be configurable so that people who are annoyed by them don't have to use them. That said, your use case makes sense so thanks again for creating that issue.

Thanks,

Phli

* https://docs.google.com/document/d/12W0YD1SGDmR1H0SpiQqFhTea7Ej-nAeSheEnePJ9xAs/edit?usp=sharing

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Philip Durbin
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http://www.iq.harvard.edu/people/philip-durbin

[Sebastian Karcher]

Thanks for all the details, this is great! As you see on the issue, I suggest different options for implementing this. Option 2 gets rid of the prompt entirely. If we go with option 3, I would very much advocate for leaving the notes field optional -- rarely a good idea to force people to fill out something they don't want to fill out :), and we do have the diff, so changes are visible without the note, too. Not all changes require an explanation.

Sebastian

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