Document Provenance Scoring Based On Changes Between Document Versions

Abstract

A computer-implemented method, system and computer program product is provided for optimizing a document change or provenance scoring system by weighting sections of a document, scoring the changes for each section, and then combining the change scores for each section to generate an overall change score. An associated report may also be generated that catalogs all of the various scoring elements. The weighted score is stored in a document management system and provides a human document reviewer a level of detail to evaluate document changes. Accordingly, the weighted score reveals whether a document's changes require a brief or detailed review before the document's changes are approved for a next document version.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method of indicating a degree of changes within a document comprising:
 partitioning the document into a plurality of sections and assigning each section a corresponding weight value;   determining a quantity of changes within each section and applying the corresponding weight values to the quantity of changes to produce a section value for each section; and   determining a change value for the document indicating the degree of changes based on the section values.   
     
     
         2 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 identifying the document based on a comparison of the change value with a threshold.   
     
     
         3 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 determining the change value for a plurality of versions of the document; and   comparing the change values for the plurality of versions to identify a particular version.   
     
     
         4 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein partitioning includes partitioning the document based on one or more of defined section labels and content of the document. 
     
     
         5 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein assigning includes one or more of manually generating the corresponding weight for at least one section and automatically generating the corresponding weight for at least one section based on document content. 
     
     
         6 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein determining a change value includes calculating the change value as one of:
 a summation of the quantity of changes within each section multiplied by the corresponding weight values; and   a summation of the quantity of changes within each section multiplied by the corresponding weight values and divided by a quantity of the plurality of sections.   
     
     
         7 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein each section is associated with a provenance value, and the method further comprising:
 combining the section values of the document with provenance values of a previous version of the document to produce a new provenance value for each section; and   determining a current provenance value for the document based on the new provenance values for each section.