How do I transfer my publications into infoscience?

When a laboratory decides to adopt infoscience, our team is able to provide it with the assistance it needs to make sure that the process is as simple and as flexible as possible.

This involves making a quick analysis of the situation (how the laboratory’s publications are handled, and possibly also its whole scientific output) and then agreeing on a roadmap. To facilitate this transfer work, our team – aided by a group of student assistants – is there to help you at each stage of the process.

The different scenarios

From the most favourable situation to the least favourable …

The data are well structured

In the ideal situation, document summaries already exist (or can be generated) in EndNote or BibTeX format. In this situation, if the formatting conventions have been respected there is practically no transfer effort. As with all data formats, these are often fluid enough to allow interpretations that make the data more difficult to use in other contexts. But that can be overcome in most situations.

The data are structured or semi-structured

Often, laboratories have already set up publication databases using “home-grown” systems. If bibliographic standards have been respected, there shouldn’t be any specific problem with this: a simple data extraction in .csv or, even better, in XML format will do the trick. Regarding this, here are some examples of databases where exporting in XML is possible: Filemakerpro, MySQL, Postgres or, lastly, MSSQL. On the other hand, if the data in the database is less precisely structured, export will still be a necessary step, carried out with the finest possible granularity and a with a maximum of details. Then the data will have to be analysed before the transfer procedure. It is possible that a part of the process will need to be done manually.

The data is not structured

This is the situation for laboratories that still process their bibliographic data as Word documents, or even directly in HTML on Web pages. In this case, only an in-depth analysis on our part will make it possible to determine what is re-usable. In any case, we strongly suggest that those in this situation quickly come up with a better thought-out and more effective methodology...

No data will be lost !

It is very important to note that we adopt a rule that is applicable to each migration process: no data is lost! If information is there in the source, it will be there in infoscience.

Resources

Use of the MARC21 format in infoscience