M721report

= M7.21 Add metadata to cover origin of bibliographies =


 * Due: 13 April 2012
 * Delivered: 11 April 2012
 * Purpose: Enhance RefBank to record who, or what if an automated process, has contributed the reference to RefBank. This is preparatory to opening up RefBank for use with citizen scientists, for which contributors need to be known to facilitate feedback and monitoring. For example, knowing who has contributed each record can be used to promote engagement through league tables of contributors. This has proven successful with the Australian newspapers project. Similarly monitoring the quality of each reference (for completeness, for example) and knowing who has contributed it, will enable the grading of contributors.
 * Benefit: Adds the accountability required to open up RefBank for a wider range of users including citizen scientists.

Online use
The online update screen has been modified to add a new free text entry field called Your Name: to populate the new Contributor data field:



Screenshot to show modified upload screen with Your Name: field.

Similarly the search results screen has been modified to display the contributor for each displayed reference.



Screenshot to show modified search results screen with Contributed by and Parsed by fields.

Batch use
A new field, user, has been added to the POST arguments for programmatic upload of references. The sample scripts to bulk load RefBank have been modified to show the use of the 'user' argument in a POST to populate the contributor field.

Implementation details
The underlying data model was amended to include two new fields that record the origin of the reference. The Contributed by field is completed by the user, and is any identifier they choose. It is not constrained, nor is it validated. However, it must be present. The Parsed by field is automatically completed by the instance of RefBank that loads the reference.

To support the revised data model all code that accesses stored data, either to create it or to retrieve it, was modified.

Existing data in RefBank was ported to the revised data model, with the new fields populated where data provenance was known.

The web pages, and their associated functionality, were updated to allow the new Contributed by field to be entered with the upload of references and for it, and the Parsed by field, to be displayed with the search results. Additional functionality has been added to the search routines so that the fields can be included in a query, either in their own right, or in conjunction with other search fields.