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I'm looking for a piece of FOSS software that is a web-based database for publications. Specifically it'll be scientific publications in the form of PDF files and associated source code archives. A publication has to hold meta-data associated with scientific papers (e.g. Magazine, Volume, Pages, Identifiers such as DOI-Number, Hyperlinks etc.) as well as the PDF and the source archive. Of course it also has to hold the Authors and let you search by various parameters...

So far I've only come around eSciDoc which I'm currently looking at but I really dislike the overhead it produces. All other things I've come around are either dead, not web-based or meant for Windows (ah yes: it needs to run on a headless Linux server) so I hope you can point me somewhere I haven't looked yet (already browsed through Freshmeat and SF.net)

So, here's a sum-up of what I need:

  • Database for Publications / Scientific Papers
  • Web-Based
  • FOSS
  • needs to run under Linux
  • Include relevant meta-data into records - extensibility would be great but isn't mandatory if what's offered suffices
  • Include PDF and source archive files in records
  • good search capabilities
  • preferably MySQL as DBMS backend
  • easy to use / good user experience would be great
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closed as not constructive by Eight Days of Malaise, Barry♦ Nov 18 '11 at 22:33

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1 Answer

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I haven't used this myself yet, but I'm about to evaluate Open Journal Systems. It sounds like it would cover most or all of your requirements and there's mention of plugins in the docs. Hope this helps!

http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/

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just tried it. unpacking the tarball reveals that they've packed it with permissions and owners preserved (esp. the latter is kind of dumb). then when I've installed it, I can't log into it using the username/password I set during installation. Their FAQ on this topic is a joke... sigh it looked promising before I tried it, so thanks anyway. At least they point at similar software in their FAQ :) – luxifer Aug 24 '11 at 6:29
...unfortunately none of those they list are in any way usable. either their website is broken or it's something completely different or outdated or whatever. oh man :( – luxifer Aug 24 '11 at 6:40
Yikes - sorry for sending you down a bad path. I'll check into OJS anyway and see if it's something fixable. Good luck - maybe post back what you end up using? – cspruck Aug 25 '11 at 4:28
no problem. I still haven't found something adequate though. ATM I'm putting something together myself since I'm about to redo our groups homepage anyway. – luxifer Aug 29 '11 at 6:05

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