Multiprovenance

Multiprovenance is a concept in provenance studies and data governance that describes a situation in which the provenance of a resource is documented by multiple independent sources or provenance chains. Rather than a single, authoritative history, a resource may carry parallel or layered provenance records reflecting different custodians, systems, or transformations. This situation commonly arises for digital objects, datasets created by collaborations, or artifacts that have passed through several institutions.

In practice, multiprovenance can lead to multiplicity and potential conflicts. Each source may record different claims about authorship, creation date, custody, alterations, or transformation steps. Reconciling these claims requires models that can express multiple provenance statements, track their origins, and indicate levels of trust or authority. Multiprovenance also raises questions about granularity: should provenance be captured at the object level, at component parts, or across steps in a workflow?

Modeling approaches often extend existing provenance frameworks to accommodate multiple sources. The W3C PROV standard provides a general foundation for representing provenance information, and multiprovenance can be modeled by attaching multiple provenance graphs to a single resource or by maintaining a provenance layer that aggregates source-specific records. Provenance fusion, provenance attribution, and conflict resolution mechanisms are common techniques used to present a coherent view while preserving source-specific claims.

Applications appear across archives, digital libraries, scientific research, and supply chains. In archives and libraries, multiprovenance enhances transparency about metadata origins and transformations. In science, it supports reproducibility when data and methods are contributed by multiple labs or instruments. In supply chains, combining provenance from producers, distributors, and certifiers helps verify authenticity and lineage.

Challenges include handling conflicting claims, version management, and presenting complex provenance to users in a clear and actionable way. Trust and access control considerations are also important when provenance records come from diverse and potentially sensitive sources.