Re: [EP-underground] The archival status of archived papers

Please help me to UNSUSBCRIBE

Thanks,

               Francis Lowenthal

ePrints Support wrote:

> Hmmm. You're not the only person with this, or similar, requirements.
>
> A possible solution would be to:
>  * allow users to move items they deposited back to the workarea
>  * always increment the document number and allow "deprecation" of
>     documents rather than deletion, so that a sensible 404 message
>     can be created.
>
> This is a painful compromise between data-quality and the needs of
> users. As an interim solution I could supply a command line script
> for returning eprints to the workarea.
>
> I don't want authors editing items live in the archive as this
> defeats the editorial process.
>
> OR
>
> I could sort out the 404 page to explain that "this item is deleted
> but there is a newer version" which I should have done all along.
>
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2002 at 01:27:15 +0000, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> >  On Wed, 27 Nov 2002, Belinda Weaver wrote:
> >
> > > We've had complaints from archive contributors because they
> > > cannot edit their papers once they have been deposited. If they
> > > want to make a change, they have to clone their paper, edit the
> > > clone and deposit that and then request removal of the original.
> > >
> > > This means an URL change which is the very thing we don't want
> > > to see - we promised permanent URLs and if they get a new URL
> > > for a cloned paper, then it's harder for them as they have often
> > > linked to the URL or mailed it out to colleagues.
> >
> > > This became an issue as one staffer deposited a lot of materials which
> > > he wanted to upgrade a little later with references etc. Since I did
> > > not know about his plans, I moved them to the main archive and he thus
> > > lost control over them from an editing point of view - unless he asked
> > > me to bounce all 32 back which is rather time consuming.  In the
> > > end he had to clone all 32 papers which seems really daft. Any
> > > hope of a change here? We couldn't leave the earlier records in
> > > the archive as the papers themselves were identical - only the
> > > metadata had changed a little.
> > >
> > > Belinda Weaver, Co-ordinator, UQ E-Print Archive
> > > University of Queensland Library
> > > University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia 4072.
> > > Tel   : +617 336 58281 Fax : +617 336 57930
> > > Email : [email protected]
> >
> > An archive is an archive. What one deposits in there one presumably wants
> > to keep in there, permanently. If something is a working paper, and one
> > wants to archive it, that's fine, but if there is a subsequent revised
> > draft, that gets archived too. The first draft is linked to the update,
> > and anyone who accesses the one will always see the link to the other. And
> > so on for successive drafts, with dates.
> >
> > That's how archiving and version control works. Now if a depositor
> > wants to use the archive for something other than archival purposes,
> > and the archive administrator allows it, that's fine too. The original
> > deposit can be deleted, and only the new draft left in. The old draft's
> > URL, however, for archival reasons, is suppressed if the paper has been
> > deleted. Internally, it is still an archival milestone, but now blank
> > and inaccessible.
> >
> > Now it is conceivable that the eprints architecture can be slightly
> > modified, so that the old, suppressed URL for the deleted paper
> > automatically redirects to the new draft if someone tries to access
> > the old one. That I have to let Chris reply about. Here I have merely
> > explained the rationale for not having designed the archive so a paper
> > could be deposited, and then modified willy-nilly under the same URL.
> > For that would not have been an archive at all, and user complaints,
> > about trying to use and cite a moving target, would have far out-numbered
> > depositor complaints about what to do with after-thoughts and successive
> > drafts.
> >
> > There might also be a way to modify the architecture so that if the
> > changes are in the metadata only, and not the paper's text-body itself,
> > then this can be done while retaining the same URL. I again leave it to
> > Chris to reply about that.
> >
> > Stevan Harnad
> >
>
> --
>
>  Christopher Gutteridge                   [email protected]
>  ePrints2 Coder, Support and Stuff        +44 23 8059 4833

--
F. Lowenthal
Cognitive Sciences, University of Mons-Hainaut
Place du Parc 20, B-7000   Mons,  Belgium
Tél : +32 65 37 31 27
Fax : +32 65 37 31 32
e-mail : [email protected]