DOIs for Dataset versions

[adam3smith]

Following up on the thread on the google group:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!topic/dataverse-community/34E9foKnxQs

Userstory

As a researcher, I want to be able to cite, using a permanent identifier, a specific version of dataset to avoid any ambiguity and to make the citation machine-actionable.

How this should probably look

Zenodo would be a good template here.

1. A dataset has one "generic" DOI that always points to the latest version (this would be used if you e.g. just cite the data generically)
2. A dataset has one DOI per version to allow to point to a specific version

Example

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1041767 is the generic dataset DOI, always pointing to the most recent version, with 10.5281/zenodo.1188752 being the DOI for the 2nd (current) version and 10.5281/zenodo.1041768 the DOI for the first version

Relationship to other features

File DOIs:

File DOIs are great (and by themselves necessary), but they are not a replacement for dataset version DOIs. Datasets are often made up of multiple files. An analysis script (which itself may be part of the data and thus versioned) may point to multiple files in a dataset. It's not feasible (or desirable) for a researcher to include the DOI for every file used in a citation. They want to point to one single DOI to reference the exact data (made up of multiple files) they've been using. This is equally true for quantiative and qualitative data, btw.

File DOIs of files that are not changed between versions should remain stable (otherwise there's a potential to massively inflate the number of DOIs issued for no good reason)

UNFs

UNFs (at least for tabular data) help ensure that a cited dataset is the one being used, so they avoid using incorrect versions, but they do not function as identifiers, i.e. UNF:6:edx+kB6SY2N3Zt9OsUbp4A== tells me nothing about where to find that dataset.

[philippconzett]

It would be good to prioritize this issue as DOI versioning at dataset level 1) is recommended to support reproducibility; 2) is implemented by other repository applications (Zenodo); and 3) is a feature desired by the Dataverse community. See also a current discussion in the Dataverse Google Group: https://groups.google.com/u/1/g/dataverse-community/c/34E9foKnxQs.

[poikilotherm]

Nice find of this long standing issue!

This is also related to my plans on adding research software depositing support.

[djbrooke]

Adding content from #7867:

I had a question on DOI and versions within Dataverse. Data in Dataverse gets 1 DOI, even when there are multiple versions present of the data package. Considering that this might hamper machine readability to refer to a specific version of a data package, would a Zenodo implementation be something to consider? That would allow getting people immediately to the correct version of a data package through a specific resolvable DOI (and avoids possible confusion on which version to use).

https://help.zenodo.org/#versioning%22

I understand that you can refer to a version by for example:

https://dataverse.nl/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.34894/2WZ0S9&version=2.0
https://dataverse.nl/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.34894/2WZ0S9&version=1.0

But that is not really the same as one resolvable DOI (https://doi.org/10.34894/2WZ0S9)

[poikilotherm]

While writing the concept paper for HERMES https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.09015, this issue moved inside my head...

It is crucial for Dataverse software to support this to be compliant with FORCE11 Software Citation guidelines.

It should be an optional feature, configurable like File PIDs.

I pretty much dislike how Zenodo did this: from a version DOI it's cumbersome to get to the concept DOI.

How about using the same trick as we did for File PIDs and add a /... after the DOI?

Sth. like https://doi.org/10.11111/FOOBAR/171727/V1?

For software, it would be beneficial to use the software version instead of the dataset version. We could use the software version from the datasets metadata and either use it exclusively or register both as DOI.

When also enabling File PIDs, how does this currently work? When a file has its own DOI, does it change when the file is updated?

[pdurbin]

When also enabling File PIDs, how does this currently work? When a file has its own DOI, does it change when the file is updated?

@poikilotherm good question. As far as I can tell, this isn't well explained in the guides. I also looked at pull request #4350 where file PIDs were introduced. For simplicity, let's just talk about DOIs.

DOIs are stored on the dvobject database table so when a new file/dvobject is created when file level PIDs are enabled, a new DOI created for that file. Even if you use "file replace", a new DOI is created. The old file and the new file will have both different database IDs and different DOIs.

Now, if you are only changing the metadata of a file (description, tags, etc.) a new DOI is not created for the file. So you can safely fix typos in file descriptions, for example, without worrying about the DOI of the file changing.

I hope this helps!

[poikilotherm]

So there is no need to worry about files for version PIDs, right? The version / DvObject knows which files belong to it and in which version, so nothing will break from this, aye?

WDYT about the idea of a version suffix?

[pdurbin]

I'm not worried about anything breaking.

What we have now is version numbers like 3.0 and 4.1. If you supply either of these numbers to Dataverse, it will give back to you the correct files for the version. You can look at the downloadAllFromVersion code in pull request #7086, for example, to see how it works.

With DOIs for versions, it just means 3.0 and 4.1 (examples from above) will still work as before but you'd also be able to supply an alias, if you will, a DOI, for each version, to download files (or whatever operation).

I'm not opposed to the version suffix idea but my understanding is that you're generally not suppose to encode anything meaningful into DOIs. They're supposed to just be meaningless strings.

[scolapasta]

there are different schools of thought on this. With file dois we did it this way doi:xxx/1 doi:xxx/2 etc to have two files within the same datasets. For version we had discussed using "." as the separator, e.g. doi.xxx.1 and doi.xxx.2

While this is not meaningless, it is not encoding anything about the content just the connection bwtween the two.

[poikilotherm]

As I wrote before - Zenodo uses a DOI for the "concept" or whole dataset and completely unrelated ones for "versions". And it's really hard to tell them apart, as they are of the same length etc.

For the software use case (and presumably others), IMHO it would be nice to make it more obvious we are talking about versions of a dataset. If that means skip the software version as it's real metadata @pdurbin , that's fine for me as long as we have an identifier for the dataset version.

Currently there is no way to jump from an identifier right into a specific version of a dataset, as resolvers remove any query parts etc.

@scolapasta using the dots is also a great idea! Maybe it just should be a configurable thing to enable broader use cases.

WDYT would be the best approach to get a discussion started? As this will definitely have an impact on the UI, there are more people involved. And what about community consensus?