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Do content libraries that provide DOIs, such as MIT's DSPACE, at least promise that the content is immutable? http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/449

Do content libraries that provide DOIs, such as MIT's DSPACE, at least promise that the content is immutable? http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/44962/BBFRFC20.pdf?sequence=1 http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/44962/BBFRFC20... It would be cool if the DOI was hashed to content. But I think immutability is part social contract of the DOI - the DOI never changes and neither does the document. New document, new DOI.

dalke 11y ago
No. Nor can they. Here's an example. I recently found a mistake in an ACS (American Chemical Society) journal. The ACS has gone back and assigned a DOI even to print publications from decades ago. Even each letter to the editor was assigned it own DOI. I found an example where there were two letters to the editor on the bottom half of the same page. It wasn't easy to tell where the first ended and the second started. The indexer created one record, gave it a unique DOI, and used the title of the first letter and the author of the second article. What does "immutable" mean for this case? Does the DOI really refer (in some immutable way) to the first record? The second record? Or the aggregate? They resolved the problem by correcting the record so it had the author for the first letter to the editor, then creating a new DOI for the second letter to the editor. That seems the most reasonable. And in this case the content - an image of the page - was unchanged because both letters were on the same page. But had the content been limited to only the letter(s), or the second letter spilled over to the next page, this fix would have changed the content. In general, some paper scans are of mediocre quality. (Not of this journal though.) Here's one from DSpace which I would like to have at a higher resolution - http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/12664/28627690-MIT.pdf?sequence=2 http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/12664/28627690... . I can well believe that 10 years from now there may be a rescan with higher quality. "Immutable" doesn't make sense in that context, does it?
- NoGravitas 11y ago
  > I can well believe that 10 years from now there may be a rescan with higher quality. "Immutable" doesn't make sense in that context, does it? I see your point, but for future research purposes, it may be highly relevant to know that what someone cited in an influential paper 20 years ago they got from a low-quality scan. At least in the humanities, that's actually the kind of thing that some researchers care about a lot.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Yes, the linked-to article elaborates on that: > Even when the search turns up the proper source, it might not turn up the proper edition of the source, and for scholars, that level of distinction very often matters. In order to ensure that Reader B has every possibility of seeing the same thing in a source text that Reader A saw, B needs to know whether A read the edition of a book published in 1819 or the revised edition published in 1831, or whether A read an article as originally printed in the journal or as it was repackaged for inclusion in a later edited volume. Much like the situation in a laboratory, these variables matter, and so this level of precision in their citation matters. That said, DOI does not make the "promise that the content is immutable". I'll quote the DOI FAQ at http://www.doi.org/faq.html http://www.doi.org/faq.html : > The IDF does not have any rules on this. Individual RAs adopt appropriate rules for their community and application. As a general rule, if the change is substantial and/or it is necessary to identify both the original and the changed material, assign a new DOI name. That means I was wrong. DOIs could be immutable in that way, but aren't. I made the incorrect assumption that what happened for chemistry-related fields was indicative of a general policy, which it isn't.

dalke 11y ago

No. Nor can they. Here's an example. I recently found a mistake in an ACS (American Chemical Society) journal. The ACS has gone back and assigned a DOI even to print publications from decades ago. Even each letter to the editor was assigned it own DOI. I found an example where there were two letters to the editor on the bottom half of the same page. It wasn't easy to tell where the first ended and the second started. The indexer created one record, gave it a unique DOI, and used the title of the first letter and the author of the second article. What does "immutable" mean for this case? Does the DOI really refer (in some immutable way) to the first record? The second record? Or the aggregate? They resolved the problem by correcting the record so it had the author for the first letter to the editor, then creating a new DOI for the second letter to the editor. That seems the most reasonable. And in this case the content - an image of the page - was unchanged because both letters were on the same page. But had the content been limited to only the letter(s), or the second letter spilled over to the next page, this fix would have changed the content. In general, some paper scans are of mediocre quality. (Not of this journal though.) Here's one from DSpace which I would like to have at a higher resolution - http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/12664/28627690-MIT.pdf?sequence=2 http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/12664/28627690... . I can well believe that 10 years from now there may be a rescan with higher quality. "Immutable" doesn't make sense in that context, does it?

NoGravitas 11y ago
> I can well believe that 10 years from now there may be a rescan with higher quality. "Immutable" doesn't make sense in that context, does it? I see your point, but for future research purposes, it may be highly relevant to know that what someone cited in an influential paper 20 years ago they got from a low-quality scan. At least in the humanities, that's actually the kind of thing that some researchers care about a lot.
- dalke 11y ago
  Yes, the linked-to article elaborates on that: > Even when the search turns up the proper source, it might not turn up the proper edition of the source, and for scholars, that level of distinction very often matters. In order to ensure that Reader B has every possibility of seeing the same thing in a source text that Reader A saw, B needs to know whether A read the edition of a book published in 1819 or the revised edition published in 1831, or whether A read an article as originally printed in the journal or as it was repackaged for inclusion in a later edited volume. Much like the situation in a laboratory, these variables matter, and so this level of precision in their citation matters. That said, DOI does not make the "promise that the content is immutable". I'll quote the DOI FAQ at http://www.doi.org/faq.html http://www.doi.org/faq.html : > The IDF does not have any rules on this. Individual RAs adopt appropriate rules for their community and application. As a general rule, if the change is substantial and/or it is necessary to identify both the original and the changed material, assign a new DOI name. That means I was wrong. DOIs could be immutable in that way, but aren't. I made the incorrect assumption that what happened for chemistry-related fields was indicative of a general policy, which it isn't.