Publications Database
Three of the case study institutions already had some form of publications database and a fourth was actively pursuing acquiring one. There are numerous advantages to a structured central publications database:
- It provides a centralised resource that will hold the data in a common format
- Key fields can be identified and made mandatory. Thus all entries can be guaranteed to hold, at least, a minimum of required data
- The inputting of records can be controlled, and limited to the set of staff required by an institution (this will be an institutional policy)
- Other sources of publication data such as CrossRef, WoS etc can be used to either validate entered data or provide missing data. These sources can be either manually interrogated and data manually copied or (with correct licensing) automatically provide uploads of relevant data to the institution. Usage of these sites can either be in real time as the output is entered into the database or via batch uploads from the reference site which are stored and interrogated locally
Publication databases would also help overcome one of the major difficulties encountered by institutions where authors of papers can use a variety of names and addresses. This problem appears to be endemic but is particularly acute for institutions that have medical schools where an academic may use 'Doctor' on campus but 'Mr' (to denote surgeon status) in hospital. A publication database can address this problem by assigning a unique ID to the individual and supporting linkages to variations in name and address.
