I started this document to to condense my thougts on adding infromations to existing records in INSPIRE. The most common cases are upadating an arXiv submission and merging the journal information to an existing arXiv paper. But of course, as soon as one starts thinking a lot of other situations, exceptions and strange cases come to mind. In principle, merging already existing dublets in INSPIRE also belongs to the complex.

Basically, we have two records A and B. Usually one of them already in INSPIRE. At the moment I distinguish two types of records: preprints and published ones, where published ones is meant in the meaning of "773__p/ 260__c" and not neccessarily "980__a:Published".

constellations:
[C1] A and B preprints (e.g. new arXiv version, ATLAS note + arXiv paper)
[C2] A preprint, B published (e.g. arXiv preprint gets published in a journal; published paper is put on arXIv afterwards)
[C3] A and B published (e.g. Erratum; selected ConferencePapers also appear in a volume of a journal)

date comparison:
Decisions will depend on which record is older. If not both the records have 260/ 269 or if they have the same date (e.g. just the year which might be the same), it is tempting to consider the record already in INSPIRE as older but there are exceptions.

fields that one always can just be added (assuming that metadata in principle are correct):
020, 0247, 035, 037, 084, 210, 242, 246, 247, 260, 773, 490, 500, 502, 520, 536, 540, 542, 590, 595, 65017, 6531, 690C, 693, 695, 710, 773, 78002, 78502, 78708, 8564, 961 (still active?), 970, 980, 981
a (may be fuzzy?) check for identical entries might be good (can become very tricky (773))

fields where only one can be taken (assuming that metadata in principle are correct):
269 take older one
300 for [C1] take newer one, for [C2] take B, for [C3] dont take erratum
999 if no CURATOR-tag and len(A(999)) not too different from len(B(999)):
for [C1] take newer one
for [C2] B overwrites A
for [C3] union for Errata

fields with complex action:
245 for [C1] take newer one
for [C2] B overwrites A
for [C3] take non-Erratum
other title added as 246__a
100, 700, 701, 902, 110

dont know:
041 just add?
111 just add? (5 records in INSPIRE have it)
250 just add? (8 records in INSPIRE have it)
962

- FlorianSchwennsen - 2015-06-24