  We investigate the relation between the known decompositions of the nucleon
spin into its constituents, thereby clarifying in what respect they are common
and in what respect they are different essentially. The decomposition recently
proposed by Chen et al. can be thought of as a nontrivial generalization of the
gauge-variant Jaffe-Manohar decomposition so as to meet the gauge-invariance
requirement of each term of the decomposition. We however point out that there
is another gauge-invariant decomposition of the nucleon spin, which is closer
to the Ji decomposition, while allowing the decomposition of the gluon total
angular momentum into the spin and orbital parts. After clarifying the reason
why the gauge-invariant decomposition of the nucleon spin is not unique, we
discuss which decomposition is more preferable from the experimental viewpoint.
