About getCITED
"...this could be one of the most exciting intellectual uses of and adventures with the
World Wide Web since it came into existence."
-- Jeremy Shapiro, Ph.D.
"Wow. This is one of these services that could become huge in time. [...]
This is a major development which, if it takes off, could have a significant
impact on the future of academic life."
-- Stephen's Web
"This site is an ambitious project to facilitate searches for book chapters, working papers,
conference papers, and other types of publications and academic research not commonly indexed. [...]
A database created solely by and for researchers and scholars is an attractive idea and
deserves support."
-- The Scout Report
Imagine a single academic database with which we could search for all of the available research
on a given topic. Not just journal articles, not just books, but "publications" of all types,
including individual chapters in edited volumes, papers from conferences and in proceedings, working papers and
reports, even conference presentations. Now imagine being able to click on a particularly interesting publication
and having its bibliography available for inspection, with each item in that bibliography providing the possibility
of clicking on it and viewing its details. Or alternatively, imagine being able to click on the authors' names
and bring up their CVs in their entirety. And to find out who their colleagues are, being able to simply click on the
faculty or department name to get a list of all its members. Finally, imagine that the contents of this
database are controlled by us rather than corporations and you'll have some idea of what is
possible with getCITED.
If this vision is to come into being, it will require the
cooperation of the entire academic community. It will require that each of us take the time to enter our
publications and presentations into the database, and then to link these publications
to the publications from which they benefitted. If we do this, we can create an incredibly powerful research tool,
one that will be accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. So if you'd like to help build the
getCITED database, read the information provided below and
then take a couple of minutes to join getCITED. After that you can
enter and link your publications anytime you have a few minutes to spare.
Features and functions
getCITED is a site
that exists to facilitate the dissemination and discussion of academic research. It has
numerous features, but at its core, it consists of two things: a
database and a
discussion forum.
What makes getCITED's database truly unique is that it lets scholars and researchers
decide what its content should be. What makes its discussion forum truly unique is the fact that,
within the comments posted, you can create
LINKS to
PUBLICATIONS and
IDENTITIES
within the getCITED database.
Other things that make this site particularly useful to the
academic community include the ability to:
- Enter in CITATION
details and SEARCH for all publication types,
including book chapters, conference papers, dissertations, and unpublished manuscripts
such as working papers.
- Create BOOKSTACKS
(i.e., bibliographies) in conjunction with other members of getCITED as
well as search for BOOKSTACKS
that others may have previously created (e.g., Murphy's
bibliography on Artifical Life).
- Create LINKS
between publications and the publications listed in their bibliographies
(i.e., REFERENCES)
or to those in whose bibliography they appear
(i.e., CITATIONS).
- Generate and view detailed STATISTICS
about works in the database, including the number of
PAGEVIEWS,
COMMENTS, and
CITATIONS in other works.
- Create, contribute to and subscribe to DGROUPS
(i.e., threaded discussion groups) on any topic of interest.
Contents and copyrights
What makes getCITED different from other databases is that its contents are
entered by its members. Because this makes it possible to harness the collective
energies of all of getCITED’s members, this makes getCITED an
incredibly powerful tool. However, this also makes getCITED incredibly
vulnerable to copyright infringement. For while citation information is exempt,
the abstracts associated with publications are in most cases protected by copyright
laws. For this reason, except in the case of journal articles, members are requested
only to enter abstracts for which they possess the copyright. In the case of journal
articles, because getCITED only displays the abstracts for articles from
journals whose publishers have given permission to do so, members are encouraged to
enter abstracts in anticipation of such permission being granted. In this case,
although the information will be on file, it will not be visible to other
getCITED members until the appropriate publisher has granted getCITED
permission to display it.
Links: The source of getCITED's power
One of getCITED's most powerful features is the ability to link the publications
in its database with their CONTRIBUTORS,
PUBLISHERS,
PARENTS,
REFERENCES,
and the publications that cite them.
However, these LINKS only come into being through the efforts
of getCITED's members; i.e., you! So whenever you have a few free moments, please
take the time to create some LINKS.
And if you really want to do a good deed, make a few
LINKS
for the scholars who may no longer be with us but upon whose shoulders we stand.
LINKS are created by clicking on the
linking icon that appears at several locations when a publication's details are displayed.
Links for any publication can be created and edited by any getCITED member
and, at any time, who has made the links can be viewed in the
AUDIT TRAIL.
getCITED is only for researchers and writers
getCITED is built on the principle that the ultimate database can only be built
with the efforts of the entire academic community and, for that reason, allows any registered
member to make changes to any item in its database. Needless to say, this leaves it vulnerable
to abuse and sabotage. This is addressed, in part, by relying on members' reports and
the use of an audit trail to record who has
made changes to a record. However, the likelihood of this proving to be insufficient
will only increase as more and more people visit the site who are not members of the academic community.
So if you like what you find here at getCITED, it would be great if you could tell your
colleagues about it.
Philosophy
getCITED is committed to providing to the world at large the most
powerful academic search engine possible at no or minimal cost. Knowing that no one is
more interested than researchers in sharing the results of research, it is
committed to putting researchers rather than corporations in control of its
contents. It is also committed to providing functionality as opposed to
flashiness in its design and, toward this end, has gone as far as it possibly
can in minimizing the graphical content of its pages.
That said, it is important to note that getCITED is very much a work in progress and depends upon the
suggestions and comments of the academic community for its continuing
development.
Software
To the degree possible, getCITED is committed to the use of
open source software development tools.
Toward that end, its operating system is Linux,
its programming language is Python, and its
web application server is Zope. Its discussion
forum is modeled on a Zope plug-in called
Squishdot that was modeled on another open
source product known as Slashdot.
We did try to use an open source database engine but, in the end, the complexity of
the software resulted in Oracle (8.1.7) being used
to serve up the data within the site. The software was put together by the
talented people at Emergence by Design,
a company that is firmly committed to using and contributing to the growing
collection of open source software tools. In particular, it is Sparky, Shawn,
Chris and Brett that have to be thanked for all their efforts getting the thing built,
and Michael for keeping the site up-and-running now that it's done(?).
Hardware
At this time, we're stealing a (giga)bit of bandwidth from the kind folks at
Emergence by Design. We have one server
at the moment, which has a single 600MHz processor and four hard drives with a
combined storage capacity of almost 100GB. And just in case you're wondering,
in addition to Oracle's "hot" backups, we shut the system down for a few hours
every Friday night to back up absolutely everything on our server, so there's no
need to worry about your information being lost.
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