Publish or Perish version 7

Introducing Publish or Perish release 7

David Adams - Mon 2 Sep 2019 08:52 (updated Tue 2 Nov 2021 09:32)

Update: We released the next version, Publish or Perish version 8, in November 2021.

In December 2017, shortly after the public release of Publish or Perish version 6, we started work on the next version of Publish or Perish. The primary goal this time was not adding new data sources, but to create a cross-platform codebase for Publish or Perish to ensure its readiness for the next decade.

In June 2019, after 18 months of intensive work, we issued the first public releases of both the Windows and the macOS editions of the new Publish or Perish 7 without much fanfare in order to do limited scale "early adopter" testing.

Today, 2 September 2019, is the start of general availability. As of now, existing Publish or Perish 6 and earlier users will receive notifications of the new Publish or Perish 7 release as part of the automatic update checks. (If you have switched off automatic update checks, you can still use the Help > Check for Updates command to update to Publish or Perish 7.)

So, for the first time, macOS users can enjoy Publish or Perish without having to resort to virtual machines or compatibility layers such as Wine.

Note: If you currently run Publish or Perish 6 or earlier on your macOS system, then the new Publish or Perish 7 for macOS can import your searches from the earlier version. At present this requires some manual work; see the instructions on the macOS page.

You can download Publish or Perish from the following pages:

• Download for Windows
• Download for macOS

Other changes

Although the emphasis in Publish or Perish 7 is on the transition to a cross-platform codebase, we made a few functional changes as well:

• The Google Scholar Profile search now allows searching for profile labels and institutions, making it very easy to get an overview of the most cited academics in a particular field or institution. Note that fields in Google Scholar are self-selected and not standardised.
• The previously separate All of the words, Any of the words, etc. fields are now consolidated into a single Keywords field in order to facilitate transparent keyword searches and literature reviews across data sources. You can use "quoted phrases" and the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT to achieve the same effects --and more-- as with the previously separate fields. Note that not all data sources support all Boolean operators even if the Publish or Perish syntax allows them. For details see the General/keyword search section of the Publish or Perish User's Manual.
• New queries are now created with a copy of the original query's parameters to facilitate quick searching across data sources.
• Introduced a new ACC [annual citation count] metric, listing the number of papers with at least 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 citations per year.
• Many hundreds of detail improvements and corrections. The most important ones are mentioned in the Release notes.

Support Publish or Perish

Development of the Publish or Perish software is a volunteering effort that has been ongoing since 2006, constantly increasing its features, data sources, use cases, and geograhical distribution. If you find Publish or Perish useful, then this is your chance to say "thank you" to the developers.

To keep Publish or Perish free (gratis) for everyone, your contribution toward the costs of hosting, bandwidth, and software development is appreciated. Only one user out of every ten thousand contributes, so any support is very welcome indeed.

Note: all prices are in Pounds Sterling (GBP). VAT does not apply.