The dataset was created by close-reading the two versions of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas side-by-side and making subjective/hermeneutic/interpretational judgements about the functional equivalence, or otherwise, of passages. I then transcribed this into a JSON dictionary.

The dataset covers the section of Cloud Atlas entitled "An Orison of Sonmi ~451" in its entirety. A side-by-side comparison of the texts indicated that this is where the primary differences lie between the versions.