By JohnR on

Hi, I'm interested in writing a publications database module for Drupal. This would be useful for universities, research institutions, etc. The internals would be taken from a similar thing I wrote on a custom site a few years ago, which can be seen here. That is, a user will be able to create a new "publication," which will automatically generate BibTeX and HTML citation text. One or more files can then be uploaded, each potentially with additional commentary (for example, to describe different versions or for a presentation version of the report).

Publications will of course also have Drupal features -- for example, reports can be attached to taxonomy terms, and other users of the site will be able to add their own comments on the report.

I guess that's it in a nutshell. See the above link and imagine it inside Drupal if the above needs clarification :-). Does anyone here have any comments on or interest in this module idea? Also, I figure that taking an existing module and modifying it will be easier than starting from scratch, so any suggestions there?

Thanks!

JohnR

Comments

km’s picture

km commented

IMO it would be nice to have such a module for any type of publications. In drupal individual reviews can be added easily.

Perhaps you should make it possible to define custom fields and use them for searching (see event.module for a clean implementation).

The module will be of broader interest if you make "buy at amazon" buttons and cover images available. Here you could lend some code from catalog.module (see my post for an 4.3.0 version.

Maybe you are interested in roads templates.

JohnR’s picture

JohnR commented

Excellent, thanks for the ideas! I'm not quite sure what you mean by "any type of publication" - ? I was thinking mostly of academic publications, although that can include differing formats including eg video, slides, unpublished note and so on. I haven't tried the Catalog module (not up to date :( ) but it seems like it would be complementary to that.

I've also been given the suggestion that such databases should be sharable, like blogs but different. Anyway I will apply for a CVS account and get started... :-)

mandric’s picture

mandric commented

i'd also like to develop something like this. i was going to make an attempt at porting videodb to drupal module. but in the long run catalog/publications is nice. have you created the "project" yet?

nikremt’s picture

nikremt commented

I think you have an excellent idea and I think there is really a great need for a module like that. Speaking for myself, I am in charge of the webpages of two research labs at my university which are powered by the amazing drupal and I would really appreciate a module like that for it would meet a great need. I really don't know php that great at all and would be of no help, but I would definately use the module.