As announced, our long planned PubMan release is now finished and the system is running in usual parameters again. The new release comprised some quite complex and far reaching technical changes basically in the background of the System, which did not lead to any changes in the well known usage of the PubMan surface. This means that all modifications are of a pure technical kind and there will be no new features or functional changes the user should be aware of. Due to the complexity of the modifications it took us quite some time to make sure the system will continue to fit the demands of our users in a proper and reliable way.
In detail the modifications included a change of the metadata standard from “Simple Dublin Core” to “Qualified Dublin Core”. Qualified DC uses a Metadata Set of eighteen different elements instead of the fifteen elements of Simple DC. In addition it uses so called “qualifiers” as element refinements, which allow PubMan to further increase the specificity or precision of its metadata.
Detailed information about the updated application profile can be found here.
In the export section we now have a new eSciDoc XML available as substitution for the old version. In regard to snippet export there will be the opportunity to choose the old snippet v5.x in favor of the new snippet v6.x for some transitional period.
Exporting via REST interface the user has the choice between old and new XML version for all export formats and citation styles. After a transitional period the old XML version will become unavailable here too.
Though there are no obvious changes in the usage of PubMan, this was a far reaching modification beyond the surface. We believe that it means a big step forward to making PubMan a better and more capable service for our customers.
We apologize for the necessary downtime caused by this release and thank you for your patience and understanding.