Terminology
Alphabetical list of terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Community | A group that a record can belong to via parent.communities. Membership lets community members discover and access the record (subject to its access settings) and lets community curators manage the record’s publication/inclusion. |
| Compound Dataset | A single logical research object that is physically split into multiple linked records - one CompoundRecord plus its PartRecords - which share one publication lifecycle and must be published and updated together. |
| Compound-dataset composition | The set of PartRecords, and more precisely PartRecord versions, that belong to a given CompoundRecord version. |
| CompoundRecord | The concrete main record/version that governs the publication lifecycle and composition of its PartRecords in the compound dataset. The term is also used for the compound dataset as a whole when the context is clear. |
| CompoundRecord RDM parent | The RDM parent of the record that acts as the CompoundRecord; in other words, the all-versions layer of that CompoundRecord. |
| Default community | The community designated as the primary/representative one for a record that belongs to multiple communities, stored as parent.communities.default. It is used, for example, to choose the branding shown on the record’s landing page and to determine which review policy applies. Not explicitly set when a record belongs to only one community. |
| External PID | An externally meaningful persistent identifier such as a DOI, ARK, or Handle/ePIC-style identifier. |
| Internal PID | The repository-internal persistent identifier. In InvenioRDM, id identifies one specific record version and parent.id identifies the corresponding RDM parent. |
| Model | A metadata schema together with its configuration, including configuration of supported persistent identifier types. |
| part_of | The API field on a PartRecord that links it to the CompoundRecord version(s) it belongs to. It is an array of URLs rather than a single value, since the same PartRecord version can be part of more than one CompoundRecord version. |
| PartRecord | The concrete part-side record/version participating in a compound structure. |
| PartRecord RDM parent | The RDM parent of the record that acts as a PartRecord; in other words, the all-versions layer of that PartRecord. |
| PartRecord-publication status | Status information carried by the CompoundRecord, especially while it is in publishing, to show whether PartRecord publication is pending, in progress, completed, or failed. A failed status corresponds to the affected PartRecord being in the publication_error state. |
| PartRecordMembership | The database table recording the relationship between a PartRecord and a CompoundRecord, including its status (I for included, PE for pending exclusion, PI for pending inclusion). |
| Preset | A reusable bundle of model components (e.g. compound_part_preset, compound_record_preset) that, when included in a model’s configuration, gives that model the behavior needed to act as a PartRecord or CompoundRecord. |
| Publication error | A workflow state entered when background publication of a PartRecord fails. The affected PartRecord moves to publication_error, and the CompoundRecord moves to publication_error as well. There is no automatic retry; an administrator must use a CLI tool to move the affected PartRecord(s) and the CompoundRecord back to revision_requested before publication can be retried. |
| Publishing | A workflow state used during compound publication. For a CompoundRecord, it means curator approval has happened and background PartRecord publication is still pending or running. For a PartRecord, it means CompoundRecord-triggered publication has been requested and the background workflow still needs to publish that PartRecord. |
| Publishing (process) | Converting draft version of a record into a published version. “Publish” does not mean open freely - it means that the record is finalized. It’s access rights then say if it is open or restricted on metadata or files. |
| RDM parent | The all-versions layer of a single InvenioRDM record. In InvenioRDM, that layer is implemented as an RDMParent class and serialized under parent. |
| RDM-parent DOI | The DOI carried by the RDM parent across versions. In InvenioRDM serialization, this is implemented as parent.pids.doi. |
| Record | A normal InvenioRDM record: a publishable unit with its own metadata and, optionally, files. |
| Record version | One exact citable version of a record, with fixed files and version-specific relationships; limited non-versioning metadata corrections may still be possible if the repository allows them. |
| Revision ID | The internal counter tracking changes made to a single record version, serialized as revision_id. Distinct from Version index: repeatedly saving a draft increases revision_id each time, while the version index stays the same until a new version is actually created. |
| Version DOI | The DOI for one exact record version. |
| Version index | The numeric position of a record version among the versions sharing the same RDM parent, serialized as versions.index. Distinct from Revision ID, which tracks changes within one version rather than position across versions. |
| Version-specific association | An association in which a specific CompoundRecord version is linked with specific PartRecord versions, not just with PartRecords in general across all versions. |
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