{"title":"Establishing Genealogies of Born Digital Content: The Suitability of Revision Identifier (RSID) Numbers in MS Word for Forensic Enquiry","authors":"D. Spennemann, Rudolf J. Spennemann","doi":"10.3390/publications11030035","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Born-digital content is rapidly becoming the norm for literary works, professional reports, academic journal articles, and formal corporate correspondence. From the perspective of digital forensics, there is a need to understand the origin of a document and its entire creation process, from outlining and drafting to editing the final version of the text. Revision save identifier (RSID) numbers embedded in MS Word documents have been used to examine the nature and extent of individual edits within a document. These RSIDs remain logged in the metadata even if the text with which they were associated has been removed. As copies of such files retain the original’s RSIDs, this metadata can be used to determine the order in which documents were cloned from each other. As a proof-of-concept, this paper examined over 400 template files generated by a single publisher for manuscript submissions to its journals. The study can show that it is possible to establish genealogies and thus relative chronologies of born digital content by first identifying those documents that share a document (root) RSID and then seriating those RSIDs that are shared between two or more documents.","PeriodicalId":37551,"journal":{"name":"Publications","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Publications","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3390/publications11030035","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
Born-digital content is rapidly becoming the norm for literary works, professional reports, academic journal articles, and formal corporate correspondence. From the perspective of digital forensics, there is a need to understand the origin of a document and its entire creation process, from outlining and drafting to editing the final version of the text. Revision save identifier (RSID) numbers embedded in MS Word documents have been used to examine the nature and extent of individual edits within a document. These RSIDs remain logged in the metadata even if the text with which they were associated has been removed. As copies of such files retain the original’s RSIDs, this metadata can be used to determine the order in which documents were cloned from each other. As a proof-of-concept, this paper examined over 400 template files generated by a single publisher for manuscript submissions to its journals. The study can show that it is possible to establish genealogies and thus relative chronologies of born digital content by first identifying those documents that share a document (root) RSID and then seriating those RSIDs that are shared between two or more documents.
PublicationsSocial Sciences-Library and Information Sciences
CiteScore
6.50
自引率
1.90%
发文量
40
审稿时长
11 weeks
期刊介绍:
The scope of Publications includes: Theory and practice of scholarly communication Digitisation and innovations in scholarly publishing technologies Metadata, infrastructure, and linking the scholarly record Publishing policies and editorial/peer-review workflows Financial models for scholarly publishing Copyright, licensing and legal issues in publishing Research integrity and publication ethics Issues and best practices in the publication of non-traditional research outputs (e.g., data, software/code, protocols, data management plans, grant proposals, etc.) Issues in the transition to open access and open science Inclusion and participation of traditionally excluded actors Language issues in publication processes and products Traditional and alternative models of peer review Traditional and alternative means of assessment and evaluation of research and its impact, including bibliometrics and scientometrics The place of research libraries, scholarly societies, funders and others in scholarly communication.