Preferences - General

This dialog box appears when you choose the Tools > Preferences command from the main menu. It allows you to edit a number of settings that affect Publish or Perish as a whole. This dialog box contains the following fields and options.

Software update checks

This box contains options relating to the periodic checks that the Publish or Perish software performs to inform you about available updates to the software. If an update is available, you will be prompted to download and install it.

Option	Description
Automatically check for software updates	Check this box to let Publish or Perish periodically check for software updates. If a software update is available, you will be notified and asked if you want to download and install the update.
Check for updates every <n> days	Enter the number of days between the automatic update checks. This option has no effect if Automatically check for software updates is cleared.
Check now	Click this button to perform an immediate check for software updates. This is equivalent to choosing the Tools > Check for Updates command from the main menu.

On-disk backup copies

This box contains options relating to the on-disk backup copies that Publish or Perish makes of your queries and their results. These copies are meant as an insurance against catastrophic failures of the system or in the Publish or Perish software (for example, a power outage just when Publish or Perish is saving its query results). The copies are not directly related to the Trash folder of the multi-query center; that folder is part of the normal multi-query tree.

Each time the Publish or Perish software terminates normally, a backup copy of the previous query set is saved in the on-disk trash can, along with any query results belonging to queries that have been deleted from the multi-query tree.

Periodically, garbage collection is performed to delete any previously stored copies and results that are older than a preset maximum number of days are deleted to avoid an unbounded growth of the on-disk trash can. At the same time, the HTTP cache is cleared of entries that are older than the maximum cache age.

Option	Description
Keep backup copies for <n> days	Enter the number of days to keep on-disk backup copies of deleted queries and results. Because this is primarily a safety feature, you should choose a maximum age that is neither too short (in case you only find out about a problem after a few tries) nor too long (to avoid wasting disk space on unnecessary files). The default of 7 days is probably a reasonable compromise.
Minimum number of backup copies	Enter the minimum number of backup copies to keep even if they are older than the maximum age set in the Keep backup copies for <n> days option. This ensures that a minimum number of backup copies will always be available, even if you use the Publish or Perish software only sporadically.
Maximum number of backup copies	Enter the maximum number of backup copies to keep even if they are younger than the maximum age set in the Keep backup copies for <n> days option. This ensures that your disk will not become cluttered with unnecessary files if you use the Publish or Perish software frequently.
Collect garbage every <n> days	Enter the number of days between the automatic garbage collections. This ensures that old data and cache files are not kept indefinitely and that orphaned files are pruned. This is equivalent to the Tools > Clear Garbage command.

Result options

This box contains options that affect the way Publish or Perish calculates and displays its results.

Option	Description
Show 'h' markers for results that contribute to the h-index	Check this box to let Publish or Perish display a small 'h' icon in front of all result items that contribute to the h-index; clear it to omit the icon. The 'h' icon makes it easier to identify which result items are part of the h-index and which items are not, and must therefore gain additional citations to increase the h-index.
Maximum significant authors/paper	Enter the maximum number of authors per paper that Publish or Perish will use to calculate metrics. This affects only metrics that take the number of authors per paper into account (for example, the individual h-index) and is meant to cap the effects of excessively large numbers of authors per paper (i.e., more than a few dozen). This option is available from Publish or Perish 4.3.2 onward. Its default and maximum values are 50. In previous releases of Publish or Perish, the maximum value was 10. Note: After changing this value, you must manually trigger a recalculation of the affected metrics by choosing the Recalculate Metrics command from the Edit menu or from the context (pop-up) menu for the query in the multi-query center.

Option

Description

Show 'h' markers for
results that contribute
to the h-index

Check this box to let Publish or Perish display a small 'h' icon in front of all result items that contribute to the h-index; clear it to omit the icon. The 'h' icon makes it easier to identify which result items are part of the h-index and which items are not, and must therefore gain additional citations to increase the h-index.

Maximum significant
authors/paper

Enter the maximum number of authors per paper that Publish or Perish will use to calculate metrics. This affects only metrics that take the number of authors per paper into account (for example, the individual h-index) and is meant to cap the effects of excessively large numbers of authors per paper (i.e., more than a few dozen).

This option is available from Publish or Perish 4.3.2 onward. Its default and maximum values are 50. In previous releases of Publish or Perish, the maximum value was 10.

Note: After changing this value, you must manually trigger a recalculation of the affected metrics by choosing the Recalculate Metrics command from the Edit menu or from the context (pop-up) menu for the query in the multi-query center.