In principle edition
and version
are very similar in their underlying meaning. Both describe a new iteration of a work that is in all likeliness different from a previous iteration.
Broadly speaking I would agree with the biblatex
documentation and say edition
is a term that applies to book-like works that are printed or at least formally published via a relatively lengthy publishing process.
version
is used for pretty much everything else including things that are traditionally not re-released.
I guess that explains your intuition that an edition is more substantial than a version:
- Some things that have
version
s were traditionally not re-released at all, in which case very small changes might be made, but everything more substantial would have to be released by different means (think journal @article
s).
- Other things that have versions are/were re-released much more frequently than the kinds of things that have
edition
s, so an edition
naturally amasses more changes in a single go than a version
.
It is interesting to see that apart from @dataset
(which we'll get to in a second) only @manual
supports both fields at the same time. My gut feeling is that this is exactly because @manual
s can be printed as books, in which case people would be more inclined to use the edition
field, or can be little booklets or PDF or HTML files that come directly with the product/software, where people would be more inclined to use version
. In the BibTeX base styles (which were written when printed manuals were much more prevalent), @manual
supports only the edition
field. For @manual
in particular, people might be inclined to put the version number of the software being documented into the version
field. I expect that people would generally try to stick to the nomenclature used in the work itself. My guess is that nowadays manuals mostly would use version
.
The @dataset
driver was added to the biblatex
core more recently (in v3.13, see https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/880). At the time the driver was added a point was made that some dataset providers use the term edition
and some use the term version
to describe different releases of their data (https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/880#issuecomment-481205207) and that people who want to stick as close as possible to the official wording would need both fields. In particular Alex Ball asked the UK Data Service about their use of edition
and version
and they explained the difference between the two as follows (https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/880#issuecomment-512270617)
The UK Data Service follows international archival/library standards, meaning that an 'edition' is different to a 'version'.
A version is generally a low-impact change, for example a small change to the catalogue record, variable or documentation metadata (fixing a typo, a slight variable labelling change, etc.). It results in a new release of said metadata, but does not involve a new edition statement or an increment in the DOI number.
A new edition is released after a significant change to data (such as a new or replaced data file or documentation, the addition of a new wave to a longitudinal study, etc.). At this point, a new edition statement is added to the citation and the DOI is incremented by one. See for example the edition history for the sixth Millennium Cohort Study at https://beta.ukdataservice.ac.uk/datacatalogue/doi?id=8156.
This lines up with your intuition, but again I expect that most people would probably try to stick with the nomenclature used in the work they are citing and would not try to assess themselves whether or not something counts as an edition
or 'only' as a version
.
In the end, the difference is probably not worth losing too much sleep over
- most entry types only support one of the two fields,
- even if an entry type supports both fields, the work you are citing probably uses one of the two terms "edition" or "version" explicitly to guide you in your choice.