What is DOI versioning?

DOI versioning allows you to:

• cite a specific version of a record.
• cite all of versions of a record.

How does DOI versioning work?

When you publish a record for the first time, we register two DOIs:

• a DOI representing the specific version of your record.
• a DOI representing all of the versions of your record.

Afterwards, we register a DOI for every new version of your record.

This is best illustrated by an example. If a record has two versions, then the following DOIs would have been registered:

• v1 (specific version): 10.24435/materialscloud:aa-aa
• v2 (specific version): 10.24435/materialscloud:bb-bb
• Concept (all versions): 10.24435/materialscloud:cc-cc

The first two DOIs for versions v1 and v2 represent the specific versions of the record. The last DOI represents all the versions of the given record. Note that technically they are all just regular DOIs.

Which DOI should I use in citations?

You should normally always use the DOI for the specific version of your record in citations. This is to ensure that other researchers can access the exact research artefact you used for reproducibility.

You can use the Concept DOI representing all versions in citations when it is desirable to cite an evolving research artifact, without being specific about the version.

Where does the Concept DOI resolve to?

The Concept DOI resolves to the landing page of the latest version of your record.

Do you duplicate all the files for every new version of a record?

No, if you change a 10kb README file in 50GB dataset we do not duplicate the entire 50GB dataset. InvenioRDM, the underlying technical software platform, efficiently handles the file storage so we only store the new extra 10kb.