ABSTRACT
Broadly, version control is the attempt to define the relationships among multiple iterations of a scholarly text, particularly journal articles. Version control existed in the print world, but the electronic environment has exacerbated the matter due to a number of varied factors, including the ease with which digital scholarship can be distributed and adapted. Political and technological issues also affect the problem of version control. Because any given article may have a preprint, a postprint, a version in the official journal, and a version in an institutional repository, among other copies, some mechanism must exist to relate and explain the relationships among these manifestations. Several current initiatives are underway within the information industry to address the problem of version control.
