[open-bibliography] Bibliography to X tool

Sat Oct 2 17:16:37 UTC 2010

Christopher Gutteridge <cjg at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:

> Interesting idea from a drunken conversation last night; Given a 
> bibliography containing (maybe) metadata, and (maybe) URIs/URLs  you 
> could build a tool to do a best effort conversion to Endnote, BibTex or 
> "bibo/dc" etc. Using a whole bunch of strategies, from basic looking at 
> the metadata, to, for example  looking up the URL 
> <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/21605/>, seeing it's got
> <link rel="alternate" 
> href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/export/eprint/21605/EndNote/ecs-eprint-21605.enw" 
> type="text/plain; charset=utf-8" title="EndNote" />
> and using that to get the endnote version. Rather than just  generic 
> rules; you could add rules for major websites and tools.
> I've got no time to do this, but it sounds like a useful web service and 
> a really fun open ended project.

I agree.
There are some existing web services which can be leveraged for this purpose (BibSonomy, CiteULike, CiteSeer, Google Scholar, ...),
and also  many subject-specific services.
Participants in the BKN project (url below) have written many python scripts for tasks like this. 
Mostly they are not yet adequately supported for widespread use, but I will be glad to share code and continue development with others. 
IP issues arise if the scripts are applied to proprietary or licensed sources.
I'd love to see someone with the necessary programming expertize and management capability initiate an open source effort or manage a webservice.  
OKFN could provide the umbrella system support for this, which could be done as part of some continuation of the BKN effort. 
OKFN or some participant in this group could try to get funding for this.  I would be glad to contribute to a proposal effort,
but do not want to take the lead.
What I think we need to see is volunteers developing code modules for various tasks, and at least a part time manager to 
oversee the codebase and installation and maintenance as a well-documented system of webservices over that codebase.
The critical component is that manager, who is needed for an ongoing commitment of time and effort, not just initial development.
--Jim
----------------------------------------------
Jim Pitman
Director, Bibliographic Knowledge Network Project
http://www.bibkn.org/

Professor of Statistics and Mathematics
University of California
367 Evans Hall # 3860
Berkeley, CA 94720-3860

ph: 510-642-9970  fax: 510-642-7892
e-mail: pitman at stat.berkeley.edu
URL: http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/pitman

> -- 
> Christopher Gutteridge -- http://id.ecs.soton.ac.uk/person/1248
>
> / Lead Developer, EPrints Project, http://eprints.org/
> / Web Projects Manager, ECS, University of Southampton, http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
> / Webmaster, Web Science Trust, http://www.webscience.org/
>
>
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