Too many copies: confusion between duplication and versioning

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014

General Track, 24x7 Presentations

The session was recorded and is <a href="https://connectpro.helsinki.fi/p9osriydlgh/">available for watching</a> (this presentation starts at 0:09:19)

Duplication is a fundamental part of how the internet works. In a cloud environment, resources are expected to be available, always. Duplication provides the solution. Several copies scattered around the web ensure that at least one of them is accessible at any given time. Duplication is a good thing. But how do repositories deal with duplication? Should a repository hold more than one copy of a deposit? Open Access mandates encourage this duplication. Institutions request the author to deposit his copy with the institutional repository. Funders require a copy to be deposited in subject repositories. Obviously, publishers advertise their copy. CRIS receive deposits from aggregations and subject repositories. Aggregations collect deposits from institutional and subject repositories. An institutional repository may receive multiple copies of a research publication from different sources. Are these copies identical? How to differentiate them? Which copy should be kept? Should more than one version of a deposit be kept? Support for versioning is required in order to tag deposits and enable repository managers to select the appropriate copy. Quality of the metadata and annotation, provenance information and trust are important. A global approach that engages all systems and partners of the Repository Ecosystems is needed.