Citations are a very core function of what we do; our users scrutinize them very closely and take the time to send us corrections. Thanks to this feedback we learned that some references and citation counts do not display correctly and we have been able to find the related bugs. It is our highest priority to solve these and we are working hard to fix them. The reasons for errors concerning references and citations are multifaceted:
- Citation links displayed with a paper don’t give reliable results or references that are visible on a paper’s reference list don’t show up as citations for the cited paper. This is a problem of the indexing function of INSPIRE, not the data. Fixing this is a top priority for us and we are currently working on it.
- The extracted reference list on a temporary entry misses a lot of references. We are working on a more robust reference extractor to address this issue, and we will reintroduce the %%CITATION in INSPIRE. This will help us extract references more accurately during this transition period, and as we expand our coverage of citations to books, conference papers and unpublished preprints.
- Citations to conference papers are disappearing. We have already addressed this issue, and are working on new reference extraction methods that will allow us to track citations to conference papers more robustly; we will do this retroactively of course.
- There has been a citation discrepancy between SPIRES and INSPIRE in many journals with volume letters. Much of this was cleaned up in SPIRES over the past six months already, but some discrepancies remain that are being given more focused attention right now.
- Incorrectly formatted cites in SPIRES with ambiguous journal codens do not get counted in SPIRES, but may be counted in INSPIRE if they have a valid volume and page. There are some discrepancies and we are working on it.
- We have a number of records that are blocked from updating in INSPIRE due to special processing of large author lists, or are otherwise curated currently only in Inspire. This will create a discrepancy in cite counts, for some records INSPIRE will be correct, and SPIRES incorrect. This is being addressed.
But don’t worry – no citation will be “lost” as we will reprocess the existing content. Once the bug fixing is done, we will also start introducing additional frequently requested data (e.g. the removal of self-citations). Please let us know if you have of any questions, feedback@inspirehep.net
And by the way – as a user of INSPIRE, you can also help providing correct publication and citation lists: First – we have come up with a feature that allows you to claim your papers so that your publication lists show correctly on INSPIRE (you just search for your name at http://inspirehep.net/person/search , choose your profile and follow the “verify your publications link”). Second – there is a new tool allowing you to correct references yourself (http://old.inspirehep.net/help/reference_corrections). Please check theses tools out and let us know what you think!