Bibliographic references: state of the art, a possible solution Jordan Biserkov, Lyubomir Penev Pensoft Publishers
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
Online databases
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
20 file formats
Import file formats
Export file formats
Universal standard?
How to be successful?
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
Bibliography of Life RefBank + REFinder ViBRANT Virtual Biodiversity A possible solution
RefBank + REFinder workflow
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
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