1 Topic by ALERC_NC

  • ALERC_NC
  • ALERC_NC
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  • From: British Isles
  • Registered: 27-01-2012
  • Posts: 20

Topic: Citing the Gateway

After a couple of conversations with different people, it occurred to me that there may be a way to help Gateway users correctly cite the source of their data when using the Gateway.  I am pretty sure every member of the NBN Forum will have seen a poorly cited report or map before which does not mention the Gateway or any of the data providers.  I think 99% of the time this will be due to ignorance rather than any other reason, and as such it could be an easy problem to fix.

It is possible for websites to have a button or link that copies the necessary citation to the Windows clipboard (or possibly produces another output like a text file or xml) which could save users a lot of time as they are then able to simply copy and paste the citation into the document they are working on.  Not only could this make it easy for people to use an accepted citation, the presence of such a facility could highlight the need to cite properly, if users hadn't already thought of it.

If it was deemed that this was a good idea, agreeing the content and format of citations might be the most difficult task, in which case I would be happy to try and form agreement amongst data providers.

Charles Roper has very kindly provided this link that show how the OED cope with the same problem http://i.imgur.com/ANdr7jY.png

I'd be happy to draft a proposal and send it into the NBN if there was enough support for the idea.

Regards,

Tom Hunt - Association of Local Environmental Record Centres, National Coordinator

ALERC_NC's Website

2 Reply by Darwyn Sumner (edited by Darwyn Sumner 06-04-2014 08:43:31)

  • Darwyn Sumner
  • Darwyn Sumner
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  • From: Dipterists Forum
  • Registered: 10-05-2006
  • Posts: 250

Re: Citing the Gateway

I use the free citation manager Mendeley a lot (detailed at http://www.dipteristsforum.org.uk/t3686 … deley.html
So many of the functions you ask for are provided by this application that it may be worth a look at. If you get the desktop app you can put a button on the toolbar of your preferred internet explorer (Firefox), clicking it will allow you to add the page details to your collection of citations. The amount of appropriate data that it can suck off the website page is variable. Properly structured pdfs with DOIs will give you a perfect and full citation, poor ones less so (e.g. NE's online "SSSI citation" pdfs) meaning you have to fill in a few of the fields by hand, right down to the poorest level of capture which pretty well only grabs the URL so you'd have to hand type the lot.
Once you've captured it however, you've got facilities for organising all the citations via keywords and hierarchical trees plus (here's more of what you asked for) the copy and paste functionality for inserting into documents, merely highlight the record, Ctrl C and paste into your document - there's over 5000 standard citation styles to choose from so one will undoubtedly suit your needs.
You also finish up with a link in your Mendeley desktop to any stored document (pdf, Word etc.) as well as the url.
I've not used it in the context of Gateway pages but it seems to offer a lot of what you ask.
(if that link fails then try http://www.mendeley.com/ - you don't get my intro with this one though)