Version control and revisions

• Short Title: Version control and revisions
• Source Documnent: Principles and best practices in data versioning for all datasets big and small
• Source Document Link: https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00042
• Publishing Organisation: RDA Data Versioning WG
• Date of Publication: 2020-01-16
• Topic: Quality control/ curation
• Keywords: versioning
• Addressed Stakeholders: data service providers, data stewards
• Full Text: A new instance of a dataset that is produced in the course of data production or data management that is different from its precursor is called a revision and it should be separately identified. A common best practice in software development is to identify these new instances as revisions of their precursors and issue a revision number. The recommendations of the RDA Data Citation Working Group give guidance on the identification of a dataset revision with a combination of timestamp of a query and each change made to data (Rauber et al. 2016). If the repository uses the concept of revisions in version control, it should communicate the revision to the user through its relevant catalogue entry.