version control what products?

[cboettig]

Each section is a bit vague about what it is version controlling. Some folks will just assume you only mean code related to stuff unless you say otherwise. Getting people out of that mindset, and thinking of vcs more broadly should be a major goal of this piece.

What does version control look like for a lab notebook? An R session on some regressions? A manuscript? (Of course you do an awesome job with the last in the example in section 2). What would be the use in each case? (e.g. author contributions are probably really nice to see for the manuscript, but less so in the notebook which is probably single author.)

How can vcs save time and energy for the author? For other researchers using it? (okay, you hit on this in 8, but it needs to untangle the effects of simply sharing code from sharing version managed code).

[yoavram]

Maybe give a screenshot/description of a project folder with all the data, code and manuscript docs committed in the repository (for example)

[karthik]

I've reorganized the paper and end the introduction with the different kinds of research outputs one could manage with git before delving into use-cases. The screenshot is a great idea. Perhaps including an annotated one (pointing out the individual components) might make sense. I'll take a shot at it.