Abstract

Bibliographic metadata (data about publications) is one of the most important commonalities among all scientific disciplines. ShaRef aims at supporting the management of this data for institutional and individual usages. Typical scenarios are:

• Institutional: A research group, institute, or the university as a whole wants to compile a list of publications of the members of the institution. Additional requirements may be selections based on dates, projects, or publication types. Typically, institutional scenarios only deal with publications (co-)authored by institution members.
• Individual: Researchers or research groups want to collect and manage publication data about their discipline. They want to use the data for knowledge management purposes (making annotations), document preparation (writing papers citing these publications), and compiling lists for dedicated purposes (such as lectures or seminars). Typically, individual scenarios include publications from all possible sources and authors.

We briefly describe the current state of the ShaRef project, the planned integration with related ETH activities (such as the yearly report, the research database, and the Silva Web CMS), and possible ways for how TIK members could help us by serving as pilot users.

Managing Publication Data

• Publication data is used widely in academic settings
  1. conducting research, collecting information about related work
  2. using publications for education (of other researchers or students)
  3. publishing publication data on the Web
  4. assessing the quality of research facilities (bibliometry)
• Tools should provide support for a wide array of settings
  1. a convenient interface for collecting and managing publication data
  2. export facilities for standalone publication lists
  3. integration with a Web CMS for Web publishing inside the CMS
  4. using an open data model for export and import of publication data

Publication Data at ETHZ

• Only weak support for publication data exists
  1. no support in the Silva Web CMS
  2. publication pool (RDB's publication data) is a write-only database
  3. some groups have built their own solutions
  4. there is no ETHZ bibliography (ETHZ does not know what its output is)
• Various opportunities for improvements
  1. Silva should support publication lists (as a built-in functionality)
  2. publication pool should support reuse and import and export
  3. ETHZ should provide a flexible tool for managing publication data
  4. an ETHZ bibliography should be available (for users as well as for statistics)

ShaRef Usage Scenarios

ShaRef — Shared References

• Initially funded by ETH World
  • pursuing a two-client strategy which did not work
  • based on XML externally, but not internally
• Continuation funded by ETH World and the ICT commission
  • Web-client as the only client, Java-client abandoned
  • running a pilot installation for a small number of users
  • re-structuring of the code
  • XMLizing the code (XML DBMS, XForms editor)
• Future integration with other ETHZ IT components
  • smooth integration with Silva
  • integration with ETH bibliography (yet to be created)
  • authentication with nethz (AAI)

Workspace View

Publishing View

Publishing ShaRef Data in Silva

• ShaRef publishes data as preformatted HTML
• Silva reads and inserts this HTML into Silva pages

Project Plans

• Better perspectives for pilot users
  • a clear perspective for the next 12 months
  • cooperation with other ETH activities (RDB)
• Software plans for the next 6 months
  • XForms-based editing
  • native XML storage
  • better integration with Silva

ShaRef@TIK

• ShaRef will be located at TIK (TIK is ICT partner)
• TIK could serve as pilot user
  • TIK could compare ShaRef against the TIK publication DB
  • individuals and research groups could use ShaRef independently
• Possible benefits from using ShaRef
  • browsable publication lists: ↗ Sample Bibliography
  • browsable standards: ↗ RFC Index

Conclusions

• ShaRef development will continue in September
• Pilot users are welcome and will be supported
• Please visit ↗ http://dret.net/projects/sharef/