Imported data formats

Information about the external data formats that Publish or Perish can import

You can import external citation data into Publish or Perish from the following sources and formats:

Source Supported formats
Publish or Perish All export formats except BibTeX
Google Scholar/Citations CSV, EndNote, RefMan/RIS
Scopus Comma-separated file (Excel et al.) , RefMan/RIS
Web of Science All export formats except Mac-based
Various sources EndNote Save All Fields, EndNote tagged, RefMan/RIS

Below are the details of each format as Publish or Perish implements them. This is for reference only; in general you do not need to know these details if you are importing the data from other software that produces at least one of these formats.

Note: To import data that you have previously archived through the Export to Archive command, see Archiving your data.

How to import external data

You can import externally produced citation data as follows.

  1. Select the query folder in which to import the external data.
  2. Do one of the following:
    1. Choose File > Import External Data... from the main menu, or
    2. Right-click on the folder, then choose Import External Data..., or
    3. Click on the New Import toolbar button, or
    4. Press Ctrl+O
  3. In the Open dialog box that appears, browse for and select the external data file(s) to import, then click on the Open button. Note that you can select and import multiple files at once; each file will appear as a separate data import in Publish or Perish.

Publish or Perish data formats

Publish or Perish can re-import all data produced by itself, except the BiBTeX export format. In particular, the following Publish or Perish data formats are supported.

Format name Field encoding Notes
BiBTeX Record-oriented, free layout Not supported for import, but Publish or Perish can export to this format.
CSV export Comma-separated, one line per record Data as exported by Publish or Perish in CSV format
CSV results Comma-separated, one line per record Results as stored in the %APPDATA%\Publish or Perish\Results3 folder
EndNote export Tagged, multiple lines per record Data as exported by Publish or Perish in EndNote format
ISI/WoS export Tagged, multiple lines per record Data as exported by Publish or Perish in ISI/Web of Science format
RefMan/RIS export Tagged, multiple lines per record Data as exported by Publish or Perish in RefMan/RIS format. Both old-style and new-style (Publish or Perish 4.0.1+) tags are supported.

Google Scholar/Citations data formats

Apart from querying Google Scholar directly, Publish or Perish can also import data exported from Google Scholar and Google Citations. The following table shows which Google export formats are, or are not, supported by Publish or Perish.

Format name Field encoding Notes
BiBTeX Record-oriented, free layout Not supported
CSV Comma-separated, one line per record Supported; see below
EndNote Tagged, multiple lines per record Supported; see below
RIS format Tagged, multiple lines per record Supported; see below

Google CSV format

From the Google CSV format, Publish or Perish imports the following fields.

Field name Imported to Notes
Authors Author names Author names are reformatted according to Google Scholar/Publish or Perish conventions
Title Title of the entry  
Publication Title of the journal  
Year Year of publication  
Publisher Publisher name  

Scopus data formats

The following table shows which Scopus export formats are, or are not, supported by Publish or Perish.

Format name Field encoding Notes
CSV Comma-separated, one line per record Supported; see below
RIS format Tagged, multiple lines per record Supported; see below
RefWorks direct export Free form, semi-structured Not supported
Text Free form, semi-structured Not supported

Scopus CSV format

From the Scopus CSV format, Publish or Perish imports the following fields.

Note: Scopus produces two versions of its CSV export format: Complete and Cites only.

  • In the former, author lists are formatted as LastName Inits, LastName Inits,... that is, with commas between successive authors.
  • The latter uses a variation of this format and exports LastName, Inits, LastName, Inits,... with commas between authors, but also between each last name and the corresponding initials.

This makes parsing the authors list ambiguous and is probably a bug in Scopus' Cites only export algorithm. To work around this bug, Publish or Perish applies several heuristics to determine the most probable interpretation of the authors' names and reformats the names accordingly when the data are imported.

Field name Imported to Notes
Authors Author names Author names are reformatted according to Google Scholar/Publish or Perish conventions
Cited by Number of citations  
Document Type Publication type  
DOI DOI  
ISSN ISSN  
Issue Issue  
Link Article URL  
Page end End page  
Page start Start page  
Publisher Publisher name  
Source title Title of the journal  
Title Title of the entry  
Volume Volume  
Year Year of publication  

Web of Science data formats

The following table shows which Web of Science (formerly known as ISI) export formats are, or are not, supported by Publish or Perish.

Format name Field encoding Text encoding Line ending Notes
EndNote Tagged, multiple lines per record ANSI code page
1252 (assumed)
Unix (\n) Not recommended (may cause problems with non-English names and text)
Other Reference Software Tagged, multiple lines per record Unicode UTF-8, BOM Unix (\n) Recommended format
Plain text Tagged, multiple lines per record Unicode UTF-8, BOM Unix (\n) Appears to be identical to Other Reference Software format
Tab-delimited (Mac) Tab-separated, one line per record Unicode UTF-16, BOM Mac (\r) Not supported
Tab-delimited (Mac, UTF-8) Tab-separated, one line per record Unicode UTF-8, BOM Mac (\r) Not supported
Tab-delimited (Win) Tab-separated, one line per record Unicode UTF-16, BOM DOS (\r\n) Supported
Tab-delimited (Win, UTF-8) Tab-separated, one line per record Unicode UTF-8, BOM DOS (\r\n) Supported

Web of Science EndNote format

The EndNote format as produced by Web of Science uses the same tags as its Other Reference Software format, but encodes its text in the current code page. This is not recommended. We recommend that you use the Other Reference Software format instead.

Web of Science Other Reference (and Plain text) format

From the Web of Science Other Reference Software (or Plain text) format, Publish or Perish imports the following tags.

Tag name Imported to Notes
AF Author names Author full names (not currently used)
AU Author names Multiple lines (one for each author) are combined into a single authors list and reformatted according to Google Scholar/Publish or Perish conventions
BP Start page  
DI DOI  
DT Document type If available, overrides PT (publication type) from Publish or Perish 4.19.0 onward
EP End page  
FT Title of the entry Full/canonical title (not currently used)
IS Issue  
PT Publication type  
PU Publisher name  
PY Year of publication  
S1 Title of the journal Localized journal title (not currently used)
SE Series title (not currently used)
SN ISSN  
SO Title of the journal  
TC Citation count  
TI Title of the entry Default title
UR Article URL  
VL Volume  
Z1 Title of the entry Localized title (not currently used)
Z2 Author names Localized author names (not currently used)

Web of Science Tab-delimited format

From the Web of Science Tab-delimited format, Publish or Perish imports the following fields.

Field name Imported to Notes
AU Author names Author names are reformatted according to Google Scholar/Publish or Perish conventions
BP Start page  
DI DOI  
DT Document type  
EP End page  
FT Title of the entry Full/canonical title
IS Issue  
PT Publication type If available, overrides PT (publication type) from Publish or Perish 4.19.0 onward
PU Publisher name  
PY Year of publication  
S1 Title of the journal Localized journal title (not currently used)
SO Title of the journal  
TC Citation count  
TI Title of the entry Default title
VL Volume  
Z1 Title of the entry Localized title (not currently used)
Z2 Author names Localized author names (not currently used)

EndNote Save All Fields format

From the EndNote Save All Fields format, Publish or Perish imports the following fields.

Field name Imported to Notes
Author Author names Author names are reformatted according to Google Scholar/Publish or Perish conventions
Book Title Title of the journal  
DOI DOI  
ISSN ISSN  
Issue Issue  
Journal Title of the journal  
Pages Start and end pages  
Publisher Publisher name  
Reference Type Publication type  
Title Title of the entry  
URL URL to online article  
Volume Volume  
Year Year of publication  

EndNote Tagged format

From the EndNote Tagged format, Publish or Perish imports the following tags.

Tag name Imported to Notes
%@ ISSN  
%0 Publication type  
%1 Citation count, citations URL, query date Produced by Publish or Perish's own exports
%A Author names Author names are reformatted according to Google Scholar/Publish or Perish conventions
%B Title of the journal  
%D Year of publication  
%I Publisher name  
%J Title of the journal  
%N Issue  
%P Start and end pages  
%R DOI  
%T Title of the entry  
%U Article URL  
%V Volume  

RefMan/RIS format

From the RefMan/RIS format, Publish or Perish imports the following tags.

Tag name Imported to Notes
A1, AU Author names Multiple lines (one for each author) are combined into a single authors list and reformatted according to Google Scholar/Publish or Perish conventions
DO DOI  
EP End page  
IS Issue  
JF, JO Title of the journal Alternates for T2 tag
M1 Citation count, citations URL, query date Produced by Publish or Perish's own exports (as multiple M1 lines)
M3 Publication type More descriptive type; overrides TY field (see below)
N1 Citation count, query date Produced by Scopus exports (as multiple N1 lines)
PB Publisher name  
PY Year of publication Alternate for Y1 tag
SN ISSN  
SP Start page  
T1, TI Title of the entry  
T2 Title of the journal Alternate for JF and JO tags
TY Publication type  
UR Article URL  
VL Volume  
Y1 Year of publication Alternate for PY tag