COD structure redeposition policy

In future, there will be a fourth deposition type, "redeposition", in the web interface. Actually, the system may offer to redeposit the duplicate structures from the main deposition Web page (so to say, the system should permit the depositor to switch to the "redeposition mode" when duplicate structures are reported).

To prevent someone accidentally or deliberately "redepositing" a good structure with a worse one, I plan some safeguards: not every registered person will be permitted to redeposit a structure. Everyone will be permitted to redeposit the structures that they have deposited themselves as a depositor. In addition, volunteers may take "curatorship" of some structures or structure ranges; they will be able to update these structures even if they did not deposit them themselves. Finally, "COD editors" will be able to correct any structure. Both "curatorship" and "editorship" will have to be requested at the COD AB, and awarded after careful consideration ;).

In this way, a self registered depositor will not be able to alter any structures in the COD right after deposition. After depositing some structures, he or she will be able to update "their" structures. Wider access may be given after the request to the COD AB.

There is an important issue about the authors of the structures. Clearly, it is unacceptable when some third persons (depositors or editors) can edit a structure, but the original author cannot. There is a technical problem however -- how we identify authors of the structures reliably. Using just author name is obviously not enough. Bibliographers use full name (i.e. full given name and surname, plus any suffixes, patronymes, second names if they are used) and an institution where the work has been done (actually, we should revise our data policies in the scripts and require a _contact_author_address field in personal communications and pre-publication depositions). Still, this is not a 100% reliable method. Probably for now we resort to asking the coauthors to become curators of the respective structures, or delegating the responsibility of updating the structure to the depositing author... Finally, we may ask all authors who wish to be able to update their structures to register as depositors, and to have a table linking structure to the registered authors (n to n relationship). Authors will be assigned to structures during the deposition; in this way, we will have a reliable, human-author-assigned list of authorship with deposited structures.

Saulius Gražulis 2011-02-13