Tensions in Practice: Current work in tension with exact cited state¶
Two editions of an invented handbook
A handbook is revised after someone cites it. A reference to the continuing work can legitimately lead to the current edition. A reference meant to support an exact quotation needs the particular edition that was read. Both can be stable identifiers; the important difference is the identity each promises to preserve, and the records needed to honor that promise.
Keep a current entry point
Follow the continuing work across legitimate revision.
Recover the cited state
Return to the particular text on which a claim relied.
Why these aims pull against each other
A broad identity can absorb revisions but cannot promise unchanged content. A narrow identity preserves that distinction while multiplying records and references.
Choose an arrangement to see what changes and what remains difficult.
Arrows express the declared relations, not measured effect sizes. Examples and quantities are illustrative.
What this choice protects
What it costs
When it fits
Compare the arrangements
Name the continuing work
Keep a work identifier and let its record identify the current edition.
- What it protects
- Readers have a stable route to the current work.
- What it costs
- The identifier alone cannot establish the exact former wording.
- When it fits
- The citation’s purpose concerns the continuing work and its scope is declared.
Illustration note: A current-record policy is stipulated; work identifiers need not all use this presentation policy.
Name the particular edition
Keep an identifier for edition 1 and mint a separate one for edition 2.
- What it protects
- The reference can distinguish the two states after revision.
- What it costs
- Each promised state needs a maintained record and retrieval path; readers must choose the right scope.
- When it fits
- Exact-state recovery matters and the institution can retain and resolve the editions.
Illustration note: The illustration is about identity scope, not a guarantee that retention or resolver funding lasts forever.
What this illustration does—and does not—establish
The source supplies the stated tension; the selected arrangements are bounded editorial illustrations. Costs and conditions remain part of the comparison.
- Neither scope is inherently better. A broad reference used as an exact-content citation is a contract mismatch.
- An identifier can denote a fixed state even if its storage location changes.
- This example assumes resolvable editions; it does not prove content authenticity or provide a backup or migration system.
Source entries
Persistent Identifier
This source passage supplies the contextual tension. The concrete arrangements and schematic examples are editorial illustrations, not measured findings.
Scopal: The Scope of Identity Determines What Survives, and Is Easy to Mis-Set
T3 — Scopal: The Scope of Identity Determines What Survives, and Is Easy to Mis-Set. The prime requires declaring "the same *what*" — work, expression, manifestation, item — but the scope choice silently bounds every persistence guarantee, and a scope set too fine or too coarse breaks references that assumed otherwise. The failure mode is minting at one scope (the version of record) while consumers cite as if at another (this exact byte sequence), so a legitimate revision either breaks finer-scoped references or silently changes what coarser-scoped ones resolve to. Diagnostic: ask what change the identifier is promised to survive and what change should mint a *new* identifier; the scope is the contract, and references made under a different assumed scope are mismatches waiting for the first revision to expose them.
The source operation
A persistent identifier is a designed handle assigned to an entity with the explicit commitment that the handle will continue to resolve to that entity across changes in the entity's location, representation, custodian, or version. The structural pattern is *separating the identity-bearing token from the resolvable substrate it points into*, so that the substrate can change freely — move, fork, rename, migrate, be re-issued — without breaking the references already made to it elsewhere in the world.