Recommended usage.

1. Create an AsCollected project the moment you have results for a research project that could be published one day.
2. Provide results provenance information for that study in the AsCollected project you created
3. As the project continues, include additional studies whenever it is plausible they will be included in a published paper.
4. When ready to submit to a journal,
   • Move all studies in AsCollected, but which are not currently in the paper, to the 'archive'.
   • Create Version 1, the first public version of your project.
   • Include the unique URL with your submission to the journal.
5. After hearing back, from the journal
   • Move out studies you will no longer include into the archive
   • Move from the archive back to the project any studies you need
   • Add and edit information to align with new paper outline
   • Create Version 2, a new URL to the AsCollected (this takes one click)
   • Replace in your submission the old URL for AsCollected Version 1, with the new URL
     (Note: while the URL for Version 1 will continue showing the old information, the URL for Version 2 is a fresh start, and shows only what was on the project at that time).
6. Repeat (5) as many times as needed till paper is accepted
7. When paper is accepted, create a final Version of AsCollected (again, this is just 1 click)
8. Include that last URL in your accepted paper, this URL gives only access to the final version of the AsCollected project. Visitors to that URL
   • Cannot see previous version
   • Do not know how many previous versions exist

Private mode
AsCollected projects start in private mode. Authors can make edits, those edits are not tracked in any way, all AsCollected stores is the current information; the moment it is edited/deleted, we erase from our database the older information.

Making public 'Version 1'
At some point, authors will want to share the project with others (e.g., the journal they are submitting a paper to) and will need a URL. At that moment, the authors make the project public, creating a URL providing access to it (e.g., https://ascollected.org/ABC_123). The information available from that URL, which we will refer to as 'Version 1', is permanent, but, authors can create new versions which do not include any history.

If the authors edit the project , e.g., add or drop a study, change study order or titles, visitors to the URL for 'Version 1' can see what the project used to be like, but visitors to any new versions do not see past versions.

Creating Version 2, 3 ...
To achieve a clean version, authors do not need to create a whole new AsCollected, they just press a button and create 'Version 2'. It has a new unique URL, and from that URL readers cannot see earlier versions or even know what version number they have.

Authors may then make further edits, and they can repeat the process as needed, creating Version 3, 4, etc.  There is no limit to the number of version an author can create. 

This design allows the following:
1) When as a reader you visit an AsCollected URL, you know that information will always be available.
2) When as an author you want to create a new clean version of your AsCollected, you can, and previous drafts do not interfere.

At AsCollected we refer to anybody playing an active role in data cleaning or analysis as an 'author'.
In some fields of science, anybody with an active role in data cleaning or analysis becomes an author of the paper, but in other fields that's not the case. If an RA or other person was involved in data cleaning or analysis but they are not an author of the paper, you have two main options:

Option 1. Make them an author of this AsCollected project
Option 2. Do not make them an author, and hence when completing the information for Table 1 here, on who did the data cleaning and analysis, indicate that nobody in the author team did.

For example, if only an RA was involved in data cleaning, and their code was not inspected by any author of the paper, you would either include the RA as an author so they can be acknowledged and they can agree they played that role explicitly, or do not include them as an author, and answer "Nobody/Not applicable" to who did the data cleaning.

We strongly recommend including every person who played a critical role in data analysis as a member of the AsCollected project, even if they are not an author of the published paper.

Email us at support@AsCollected.org