Summary

Baseprint document successions are preserved in Git-compatible [ 1 ] repositories and archives. Three such examples are the Software Heritage Archive, GitHub, and GitLab. See the Relationship to Git section for more details. The data archived is the machine-readable content of a document, separated from how it is visually presented. The benefits of this separation are discussed in the Diversity of Reading Venues section. A key component to making this separation possible is discussed in the Document Succession Identifiers section. These identifiers can be used for bibliographic references similar to a DOI [ 2 ]. This extends one of the great features of traditional academic publishing, namely, the ability of researchers to reference a static archived document long into the future.

Document Succession Identifiers

A Document Succession Identifier (DSI) [ 3 ] is an intrinsic persistent identifier [ 4 ] of a Baseprint document succession. It is a textual identifier similar to a DOI [ 2 ] or a web address URL. This document itself is archived as a Baseprint document succession with DSI:

dsi:wk1LzCaCSKkIvLAYObAvaoLNGPc

This is a base DSI, which identifies all snapshots within a Baseprint document succession, both current and future. Similar to textbooks and preprints, Baseprint document successions contain multiple editions (or versions) of a Baseprint document, each encoded as a Baseprint document snapshot [ 5 ]. A base DSI identifies all the editions of a document added to a Baseprint succession. Usually, readers are interested in the latest edition in the Baseprint succession.

An edition number can follow a base DSI to identify a specific static edition. For instance:

dsi:wk1LzCaCSKkIvLAYObAvaoLNGPc/1.1

Conclusion

As of late 2023, Baseprint successions have been implemented and used by the author for over a year. Authors interested in publishing Baseprint successions can visit try.perm.pub to get started.

For technical details on how DSIs are implemented, see the Document Succession Identifier Specification [ 3 ] or the software library at gitlab.com/perm.pub/hidos.

Acknowledgments

This document was copyedited using CopyAid.it, which uses OpenAI GPT-4.

Changes

From Edition 1.1 to 2.1

References

  1. Wikipedia contributors. Git — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Git&oldid=1177307938.
  2. Wikipedia contributors. Digital object identifier — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2023, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Digital_object_identifier&oldid=1177404866.
  3. Ellerman, E. Castedo. Document succession identifiers. 2024, https://perm.pub/1wFGhvmv8XZfPx0O5Hya2e9AyXo/2.
  4. Software Heritage. Intrinsic and extrinsic identifiers. 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20221019201056/https://www.softwareheritage.org/2020/07/09/intrinsic-vs-extrinsic-identifiers/.
  5. Ellerman, E. Castedo. What is a baseprint?. 2023, https://perm.pub/HKSI5NPzMFmgRlb4Vboi71OTKYo/1.