As a superuser, I want to make metadata updates without changing dataset version

[adam3smith]

Originally posted to Community list where @pdurbin linked to a previous request on the list for similar functionality.

There are two main use cases for us:

1. We want to add publication metadata (e.g. studies referencing and/or using the dataset) after the dataset is published. This is fairly common
2. We may want to fix or further enhance metadata after initial publication

Especially 1.) can occur many times over the lifespan of a dataset and we think bumping up the version number, even with "minor version bump", especially when you see something like "Version 1.12" for replication data, may cause confusion/wasted time at best (with people spending time checking changes between versions) and suspicion at worst ("Why was this replication data update after the fact?").

I understand there are concerns especially among people running DV as a self-service repository, so this needs to be limited to the right permissions. On our end, we would be happy with limiting this to super users, but I can see the case for groups wanting to do this within their own (sub-)Dataverses, so there may be a case for allowing this for Dataverse admins but I have no strong feelings about this either way.

[djbrooke]

Thanks @adam3smith. I ran this by @mercecrosas and she's OK with it.

As far as implementation, I'm thinking API only and no front end. Do you (or anyone else out there) have any thoughts on this approach?

[adam3smith]

Thanks for checking. API-only works for us

[djbrooke]

@scolapasta - I have this one as ready to be estimated and I'd like to get your thoughts on the architecture here. Would this be a separate API endpoint or would the "no version update" be something that's passed as part of a request to a current endpoint? Or something completely different? I feel like the latter would be more scalable, but I'm not familiar enough with this. Thanks!