With the move towards open research information, the DOI registration agency DataCite is increasingly used as a source for metadata describing research data, for example to perform scientometric analyses. However, there is a lack of research on how DOI metadata describing research data are created and maintained. This paper adresses this gap by using DataCite metadata provenance information to analyze the overall prevalence and patterns of change to DataCite DOI metadata records. The results show that change of DataCite DOI metadata records is common, but it tends to be incremental and not extensive. DataCite DOI metadata records offer reliable descriptions of datasets and are stable enough to be used in scientometric research. The findings mirror insights from previous studies of metadata change in other contexts, suggesting that there are similarities in metadata practices between research data repositories and more traditional cataloging environments. However, the observed changes don't seem to fully align with idealized conceptualizations of metadata creation and maintenance for research data. In particular, the data does not show that metadata records are maintained continuously, and metadata change has a limited effect on metadata completeness.

翻译：随着开放研究信息的发展，DOI注册机构DataCite日益成为描述研究数据的元数据来源，例如用于进行科学计量分析。然而，目前缺乏关于描述研究数据的DOI元数据如何创建和维护的研究。本文利用DataCite元数据溯源信息，分析了DataCite DOI元数据记录变更的整体普遍性和模式，从而填补了这一空白。结果表明，DataCite DOI元数据记录的变更较为常见，但往往是增量式的且不广泛。DataCite DOI元数据记录提供了对数据集的可靠描述，其稳定性足以用于科学计量研究。这些发现与先前在其他背景下对元数据变更的研究见解相呼应，表明研究数据存储库与更传统的编目环境在元数据实践上存在相似性。然而，观察到的变更似乎并未完全符合研究数据元数据创建和维护的理想化概念。特别是，数据并未显示元数据记录被持续维护，且元数据变更对元数据完整性的影响有限。