M725report

= M7.25 Enhance reference parser to parse references in bulk uploads =


 * Due: 31 October 2012
 * Delivered: 30 October 2012
 * Benefit: Plain text strings are parsed on loading into RefBank, a significant enhancement for the many potential users of RefBank who do not use citation manager software. Parsed references can be accessed by their components, eg author or date. Hence, the re-use of references is greatly eased because they are now easier to retrieve.

Summary
Anecdotal review shows that many taxonomists avoid the learning curve of using citation manager software and hold their reference list as a document. This milestone delivers the benefits of parsed references without demanding any additional work from the user. Building on the changes made in M724 to enable bulk uploads of plain text strings, this milestone dleivers automatic parsing of the references into their components. Once this has been, and the results stored in RefBank, it enables more sophisticated search and discovery options for the re=use of the refernces both within RefBank and with the new service REFinder to be developed in Year Three.

Use
This change requires no change in user interaction with RefBank, nor with any programs that call RefBank's RESTful interface to load references. If 'plain text' is selected the references are now automatically parsed.



Screenshot to show bulk upload of plain text references.

Implementation details
RefParse, part of GoldenGATE, was implemented within RefBank to parse uploaded strings automatically. No user intervention is required.