STAGE: Draft.

AUDIENCE: Researchers capable of signing git commits from the command line who would like some of their research documents to enjoy new benefits described in this document.

SUMMARY: The Digital Succession Identifier (DSI) is a new kind of persistent identifier for bibliographic references. For research communication, a DSI provides novel benefits such as the identification of research documents that are amendable by the author. A DSI together with JATS XML can also provide a new combination of benefits found in traditional academic publishing, preprint servers and PubMed Central, while avoiding some of their limitations.