Bibliographic references:state of the art,a possible solutionJordan Biserkov, Lyubomir PenevPensoft Publishers

Facts of lifeDifferent 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 referencesThere are multiple online databasesThey have different focus and scopeThey store information not only in different formats,

but with different levels of granularityThey have different user interfacesThey have different APIsThere are 30+ actively developed offline reference

managers There are ~20 file formatsThere 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 databasesPeople don’t want to have to learn multiple interfacesPeople want simplicityPeople want ease of usePeople want a single place to find references

Bibliography of Life RefBank + REFinder

ViBRANTVirtual Biodiversity

A possible solution

PubMed CrossRef

RefBank

Mendeley

List of marked-up results(ranked)

Different file formats(i.e., XML, RIS, BibTex)

Search Reference

Different citation styles (i.e., Nature, Science,

Pensoft, Wiki)

Scratchpads

Pensoft Journals

BioStore DataBase X

Human driven searches

Continuously populates RefBank

Global Names

Other sources

Automated harvesting of reference lists

Reconciliation layer

RefBank clean bucket

Refbank Parser

Results?

YES!

No

Data Input

Query

Results

ManuallyAdd reference

Converter

Bibliography of Life: RefBank + RefFinder WorkflowRefBank + REFinder workflow

What will REFinder be?REFinder will be a middle man between You and

(eventually) all reference databases in the worldREFinder will be freeREFinder will be open-sourceREFinder will be based on open standards

(Citation Style Language CSL)REFinder will be available as a website to end-users

as a web service

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION