1. Bibliographic references: state of the art, a possible solution Jordan Biserkov, Lyubomir Penev Pensoft Publishers

2. Facts of life Different projects have different (usually limited) goals, scope, funding, expertise, etc. Even the results of successful ones are usually too specific and incompatible with similar projects around the world But that’s OK - trying to please everyone is the surest way to fail

3. Online databases

4. Bibliographic references There are multiple online databases They have different focus and scope They store information not only in different formats, but with different levels of granularity They have different user interfaces They have different APIs There are 30+ actively developed offline reference managers There are ~20 file formats There are ~ 600 citation styles

5. 20 file formats

6. Import file formats

7. Export file formats

8. Universal standard?

9. How to be successful?

10. What do people want? People don’t want multiple competing databases People don’t want to have to learn multiple interfaces People want simplicity People want ease of use People want a single place to find references

11. Bibliography of Life RefBank + REFinder ViBRANT Virtual Biodiversity A possible solution

12. RefBank + REFinder workflow

13. What will REFinder be? REFinder will be a middle man between You and (eventually) all reference databases in the world REFinder will be free REFinder will be open-source REFinder will be based on open standards (Citation Style Language CSL) REFinder will be available as a website to end-users as a web service

15. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION