Final answer:
Automated version control plays a crucial role in data cleaning by providing comprehensive documentation of data changes, aiding collaboration, and enhancing auditability.
Step-by-step explanation:
The role of automated version control in data cleaning is to significantly contribute to documenting data changes. It is an essential tool for tracking and managing changes to data and code, which ensures transparency and reproducibility in data cleaning processes. Automated version control systems, like Git, allow multiple users to work on the same files and help in keeping a complete history of changes, facilitating the ability to audit, revert, or understand changes made over time.