Release 3.4.0

Since the first of December BibSonomy 3.4 is here.

If you were still using our legacy layout, you may have noticed that we deprecated it in favor of our bootstrap layout, which we introduced in BibSonomy 2.0.48.

Besides that,  not much has changed on the front end. Under the hood however, a lot is different now. All search capabilities are now handled by Elasticsearch. We hope this will increase the search performance in terms of speed and accuracy for the user, as well as decrease the load on the server handling the searches. We are looking forward to get some feedback from you concerning this.

Of course we fixed quite a few bugs and errors in the code as well.

This will be the last release in 2015. We wish you a wonderful Christmas time!

Happy tagging,
Tom

Feature of the Week: BibSonomy Scholar

We are happy to introduce our new Google Chrome extension BibSonomy Scholar which tightly integrates Google Scholar and BibSonomy. It allows to directly manage your publication within the Google Scholar web interface.

Current features include indicators marking publication you already posted, inline posting new publications, quickly editing posted publications, directly adding missing PDFs to your publications, as well as several other possibilities to access BibSonomy features with much less hassle.

You can find the Google Chrome extension on the Chrome Web Store. For addition information, a full set of features and the possibility to request further features or report bugs, please refer to our Bitbucket repository, where the source of the extension is also openly available.

Since this is the first release of BibSonomy Scholar, there might still be some rough edges and bugs. Thus, we would greatly appreciate feedback and ideas to further enhance this extension. Nevertheless we hope that you enjoy the provided features and find BibSonomy Scholar as useful as we do. Have fun using it!

Happy tagging
Martin

Release 3.3.0

On October 7th we released BibSonomy version 3.3.0. Mostly we fixed and polished code on the back end site. However, we also added an interesting new feature, the BibSonomy Genealogie.

This feature is a result of a joint project of the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER-Kassel) and the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Information System Design (ITeG) at the University of Kassel.

With this feature you are now able to search for dissertations posted as such in BibSonomy, and add information like the doctoral advisor, reviewers and so on. For this we provide new person-pages for authors that show their dissertation(s) and other works.To give it some initial content we imported over 1 million dissertations from the dissertation catalog of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB).

Our ultimate goal is to obtain a genealogy tree of the sciences such that everyone can search for their roots in academia.

So, post your dissertation, if you like, and add the links to your advisors, etc.

Happy tagging,
Tom

Stable Version of the PHP REST Client and a Developer Tutorial have been released

As announced a few month ago, there is a new REST client for PHP developers (restclient-php). Now we can proclaim the first stable release of version 1.0.0. This PHP library is really easy to use and supports all functions of the BibSonomy REST API. It also provides an integrated CSL-processor (citeproc-php) that helps you to render bibliographies.

In addition, there is a tutorial for the use of restclient-php which contains some useful examples scripts.

We hope that helps you to develop your own App for BibSonomy.

Happy tagging,
Sebastian

Feature of the Week: Person Entities

It is vacation time and hence our features of the week are more sporadic but this week we want to give you a glimpse on current developments. 

One of the main features we are working on is the implementation of persons (i.e., authors and editors of publications as well as users) as first-class entities in BibSonomy. The goal is to improve the search and disambiguation facilities. These are crucial for person names since they frequently contain duplicates (example: http://www.bibsonomy.org/author/Li). 

This also allows us to add extended features for persons. For instance, it will be possible to define relationships between persons like the advisor-advisee relation. Ultimately, this will extend BibSonomy towards a full-fledged system to manage scientific genealogies. We hope you will like this feature and welcome any comments on it!

Feature of the Week: New REST Client for PHP

We spent some time developing a new full-featured REST Client in PHP in order to make it much easier for you to develop new Apps for the BibSonomy universe.

The new REST client library comes with a lot of new features:

• It's full-featured that means the client supports the whole functionality of the API.
• It contains a model such that it is convenient for you to work with the data.
• It supports Basic Auth as well as OAuth authentication methods.
• It's easy to integrate in your PHP App, since we have used composer, a powerful tool in order to integrate and autoload requirements of 3rd party software.
• You can output a fetched set of publications as a CSL-rendered publication list in your favorite citation style.

In order to use the restclient-php library you need to do three steps:

1. Install the library via composer and include the autoloader file.
   
   Installing Composer locally is a matter of just running the installer in your project directory:
   
   curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
   
   Then, add the restclient to the requirements of your project. Run the following command on a terminal within your project folder:
   
   php composer.phar require academicpuma/restclient-php:1.0.0-alpha
    
2. Create an Accessor. This object is required to authenticate your App on the REST API of BibSonomy. You can choose between two authentication methods, Basic Auth or OAuth. For Basic Auth this would be:
   
   <?php

require 'path/to/vendor/autoload.php';
use AcademicPuma\RestClient\Accessor\BasicAuthAccessor;

$accessor = new BasicAuthAccessor('http://www.bibsonomy.org', [your-username], '[your-apikey]');
?>
 
3. Create a RESTClient object and perform a request. This object is your interface to BibSonomy. This class provides all supported functions to get, create, update, and delete posts, tags, documents, user and groups. For example:
   
   <?php

use AcademicPuma\RestClient\RESTClient;
use AcademicPuma\RestClient\Config;

$restClient = new RESTClient($accessor);
//choose Resource type and tags
$restClient->getPosts(Config\Resourcetype::BIBTEX, Config\Grouping::USER, [username], ['tag1', 'tag2']);
?>
   
   Now, you can choose the format. There are four options: XML, CSL (JSON), Model (PHP Objects), Bibliography (CSL-rendered publication list):
   
   

   <?php
   
   
   //output xml
   echo $restClient->xml();
   
   //output CSL
   echo json_encode($restClient->csl());
   
   //use the model
   $posts = $restClient->model();
   foreach($posts as $post) {
       echo $post->getResource()->getTitle()."<br />\n";
   }
   
   //print a bibliography in your preferred style and language
   echo $restClient->bibliography('apa', 'en-US');
   
   ?>
   

Currently restclient-php is considered as unstable alpha version. If you encounter  any errors or problems, feel free to report an issue on our code repository.

Happy tagging,
Sebastian.

Feature of the Week: Safari Extension

We already released a Chrome extension and a Firefox plugin to replace our old Javascript based bookmarklets. Today we are pleased to announce the launch of our new Safari extension. The extension adds three new buttons to your browser:

The first button opens your personal BibSonomy home page. With the other two buttons you can post new bookmarks or new publications to BibSonomy. 

You can download the plugin from the Browser Add-ons & Bookmarklets page.

happy tagging
Daniel

Feature of the Week: Fast tag editing

A very comfortable feature of BibSonomy is available again in Version 3, an easy way to edit tags without having to edit the whole entry. Whenever looking at your own entries in some way you can use the "edit tags button" shown in the picture below to change the tags of this entry. 

The following window will appear. New tags can be added by typing the tag followed by a space bar. Just don't forget to hit the save button! 

You can also edit tags of multiple entries which is desribed in another FotW. 

Happy tagging!
Lena

New BibSonomy JabRef Plugin Released

We recently updated the BibSonomy plugin for JabRef. JabRef is a Java based open source bibliography reference manager which runs on your local desktop. With the BibSonomy plugin, you can import and export your BibTex entries and attached documents from BibSonomy to JabRef and vice versa.

The new version of the plugin has been adapted to support current JabRef versions such as 2.10.
You find the latest release, documentation, and source code of the BibSonomy JabRef plugin on https://bitbucket.org/bibsonomy/bibsonomy-jabref-plugin/wiki.

Happy Tagging!

Post History

Since Version 3.1.0, BibSonomy has a new feature that helps you to keeps track of the history of your posts.

Assume you have a BibTex post such as the following which you have edited a few times.

By clicking on the "view history of this post" link in the dropdown menu, you see the changes you have made on this post.

By default, particular textual differences are shown between each pair of two consecutive versions.
You may also choose to display the difference between the current version and a specific older version in the history. You can do this by selecting "current version" in the dropdown field of the older version.

If you have chosen to compare a version with the current version, you also have the opportunity to restore particular fields. If you like to do so, first press the restore button which lies beneath the pop-up window. Then, you select the fields you would like to restore, and finally confirm the restore.

By the way: The history of your posts is only visible to you and not to other users, so nobody can see any of your secret mistakes you might have made earlier.

Enjoy the history feature and
Happy Tagging!

Feature of the Week: TeXlipse Extension Update

We are happy to announce the release of our TeXlipse Extension version 0.1.1.1. For more information about the extension, please have a look at this Feature of the week or at the help page of the extension.

To update your extension please add the new update site texlipse.bibsonomy.org and use the Eclipse update mechanism to install the latest version of the extension. Please note: the update site of TeXlipse (texlipse.sourceforge.net) contains an older version of the plugin. Newer versions of the plugin will only be distributed over the new update site (texlipse.bibsonomy.org).

What's new in 0.1.1.1?
The new release allows you to configure the API endpoint. Starting with this release, all PUMA users can use the extension with the PUMA installation of their institution. The API url can be obtained by adding /api to the web address of your PUMA system (e.g. the API endpoint of http://puma.uni-kassel.de is http://puma.uni-kassel.de/api). Furthermore, we have fixed some bugs.

Happy texing and tagging

Daniel

Feature of the Week: BibSonomy Plugin for Google Docs

During a project in Web Technologies at the Leibniz University of Hannover we developed a plugin for Google Docs, which connects to BibSonomy to access the user's bookmarked publications and helps inserting them with a single press of a button:

We added a search mechanism to provide a simple way of searching for specific documents in bigger collections. The plugin has an easy-to-use user interface, which is embedded as a sidebar in the Google Docs interface. The login into BibSonomy uses the username and the API-Key of the BibSonomy account to access the bookmarks. After the first login your information is saved into the document, so you have to provide your user information only once.

You can read more about the plugin and get the source code on Bitbucket or you can try it yourself in this example Google Doc.

Happy writing!

Linh Phan and Florian König

BibSonomy TYPO3 Extension Supports TYPO3 Version 6.2 LTS

PUMA/BibSonomy CSL is an extension for the TYPO3 content management system. It renders publication lists and tag clouds, e.g., for personal home pages or project websites. Since it uses publication data directly from PUMA/BibSonomy. They can be selected using tags or user/group names. Thus users are spared the effort of adding publications manually to TYPO3.

The last long term support (LTS) release of TYPO3 was version 4.5, which by now is not longer supported. Therefore, we have updated PUMA/BibSonomy CSL, to work with TYPO3 6.2 (LTS). More information about the release road map of TYPO3 can be found on https://typo3.org/typo3-cms/roadmap/.

PUMA/BibSonomy CSL uses the Citation Style Language (CSL). Thus, users can choose to render their publication lists in any bibliographic style. A huge set of CSL styles is available at http://zotero.org/styles.

Get an overview of the extension's features:

• Insert publications from individual users or groups.
• Use tags to filter publications of a certain topic.
• Choose your favourite style from a set of citation stylesheets to render a bibliography in your favourite bibliographic style, such as APA, Harvard, Chicago, and many more.
• Install and manage your own citation stylesheets.
• Choose a language for your citation style.
• Insert a tag cloud on your webpage and present your top topics of interest.
• Offer associated documents as download.
• Render preview images of these documents.
• Group your entries by year or publication type.
• Sort your publication list by title, author, and year.
• Configure the extension once in TYPO3, and manage your own publications in BibSonomy/PUMA.

Download the extension: http://typo3.org/extensions/repository/view/ext_bibsonomy_csl

Get the source: https://bitbucket.org/bibsonomy/bibsonomy-typo3-csl

BibSonomy Release 3.2.1

Today, we released version 3.2.1 of BibSonomy, thus fixing a few bugs from 3.2.0. With 3.2.0, we introduced a Russian language version of BibSonomy.

Happy Tagging!

Feature of the Week: BibSonomy for Ruby!

Recently, we have published a BibSonomy client for Ruby that enables easy retrieval of posts with the popular programming language Ruby. The code is published on GitHub but also available as a Gem such that you can install it with a simple gem install bibsonomy. Using the client is as convenient as with the BibSonomy clients for other languages: just instantiate it with your user name and API key and then query BibSonomy:

require 'bibsonomy'
api = BibSonomy::API.new('yourusername', 'yourapikey', 'ruby')
posts = api.get_posts_for_user('jaeschke', 'publication', ['myown'], 0, 20)

This requests the first 20 publications of the user "jaeschke" that have the tag "myown". They are returned as ruby objects within a list.

We have also integrated the CSL rendering language such that with the following lines you can easily render posts in any of the thousands of style sheets available for CSL:

require 'bibsonomy/csl'
csl = BibSonomy::CSL.new('yourusername', 'yourapikey')
html = csl.render('jaeschke', ['myown'], 100)
print html

Feel free to contribute to the client by forking it.

Last but not least: If you like Jekyll, you can use it to render publication lists on your homepage directly from BibSonomy. Checkout the Jekyll plugin and the accompanying explanation on how to use it. With the right CSS you get a publication list that looks nice and quite similar to that from DBLP.

Happy programming with Ruby!

Feature of the week: Group rebuild

Until this point, group handling in BibSonomy has been very awkward and not intuitive. Users could not leave their groups, the creation process was sturdy and slow and the administration interface wasn't exactly a nice sight.

But fear not, we did a great bunch of work on this. In the following, we will show you shortly how to request a group, invite users and request membership of a group. We will also cover a bit on the new group roles we introduced.

HowTo: Request a group

This has now been made easy as cake! Just click on the groups menu button in the blue navbar at the top and select create new group (see Fig 1).

Fig 1: There is a new option in the groups menu to request a new group.

You are then asked to enter a few details about your new group such as the name of the group, give a short description as well as a reason why you want to have that new group. (see Fig 2).

Fig 2: The form to request a new group

After submitting that form by clicking on request group, your request will be forwarded to the administrators who review it. When your request is accepted, you will receive a mail which leads you directly to the group settings menu.

HowTo: Administrate a group

You now are the proud administrator of a new group! It's time to adjust some settings and invite users! Either click the provided link in the group activation mail or navigate the menu to the group settings (see Fig 3).

Fig 3: Where to find the group settings menu

On the group settings page (Fig 4) administrators have full access to a range of options regarding their groups. You can alter the basic information like the full name of the group (e.g. kde turns into Knowledge and Data Engineering), the homepage or the privacy settings for all members of your group. This page will be extended by a great deal in the future.

Fig 4: The basic group settings

HowTo: Member management

But up to now you are the only member of the group. Unless you want it to stay boring you should invite users to join in your awesome team! Visit the member list tab on your group settings page (see Fig 5) and see that you as owner of the group are the only member.

Fig 5: The (still) empty member list

Inviting users is easy! Just type the name of a prospective member in the text field right under group invites and hit invite! The user will receive a mail and get notified on her settings page (where she can access all of your groups as well and can still share and unshare her personal documents with your groups). If you change your mind later, you can disband the group invite by simply deleting it.

Users can also request membership in your group on their own on the Join Group page http://www.bibsonomy.org/joinGroup?group=???. An exemplary page with pending memberships can be seen in Fig 6.

Fig 6: The member list with join requests and invites

This should be enough for now for you to get a notion of our new groups system :) In future, we will focus in detail on different aspects like group roles or other features of the new group system.

Happy tagging :)

Thomas

Release 3.1.0

Yesterday, we released BibSonomy version 3.10. This particular version marks the final milestone of our PUMA II Project. It includes several new features like

• an editing history for posts
• community posts - a new kind of publication or bookmark post that can be edited and improved by the community of all users, such that especially for publications the metadata can be completed or corrected
• a complete overhaul of BibSonomy's group mechanisms, introducing group roles like group admin and group moderator, as well as a much easier way to request and to join new groups and to invite users
• approved posts - users can now obtain the ability to approve the quality of a post's meta data and mark the post accordingly.

We also prepared the BibSonomy engine to create a joint search engine over all PUMA instances, such that PUMA users will be able to query all PUMA-instances at once instead of only their own.
We also improved our Pingback implementation, the sync api, and as always various scrapers.

Happy Tagging
Stephan