IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jpubli/v11y2023i3p35-d1178874.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Establishing Genealogies of Born Digital Content: The Suitability of Revision Identifier (RSID) Numbers in MS Word for Forensic Enquiry

Author

Listed:
  • Dirk H. R. Spennemann

    (School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences, Charles Sturt University, P.O. Box 789, Albury, NSW 2640, Australia)

  • Rudolf J. Spennemann

    (Independent Researcher, Canberra, ACT 2602, Australia)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Dirk H. R. Spennemann & Rudolf J. Spennemann, 2023. "Establishing Genealogies of Born Digital Content: The Suitability of Revision Identifier (RSID) Numbers in MS Word for Forensic Enquiry," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-25, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:11:y:2023:i:3:p:35-:d:1178874
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/11/3/35/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2304-6775/11/3/35/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jpubli:v:11:y:2023:i:3:p:35-:d:1178874. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.