Using PoP: General preferences

Publish or Perish tutorial

Anne-Wil Harzing - Sat 6 Feb 2016 16:10 (updated Thu 2 Jun 2022 11:17)

Note: This tutorial was originally written for Publish or Perish v4 and all screenshots come from this version. However, the information as such is also applicable for later versions of Publish or Perish.

Note: This dialog box was restricted from Publish or Perish 6.36 to prevent abuse. Communication with this data source uses preset defaults for most settings from this release onward.

This dialog box appears when you choose the Tools > Preferences command from the Publish or Perish main menu. Unless you know what you are doing, don’t change any of these preferences. The default settings are chosen to ensure the best result for nearly all users.

The general preferences allow 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.

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). You do not really need to understand these options. Publish or Perish will automatically ask you to restore data when you restart after unexpected termination of the program. If you do want to know more, check the help file.

Result options

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

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 PoP 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). It is meant to cap the effects of excessively large numbers of authors per paper (i.e., more than a few dozen). 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.

Support Publish or Perish

The development of the Publish or Perish software is a volunteering effort that has been ongoing since 2006. Download and use of Publish or Perish is and will remain free (gratis), but your support toward the costs of hosting, bandwidth, and software development are appreciated. Your support helps further development of Publish or Perish for new data sources and additional features.

Feedback

PS: If you are using Publish or Perish on a regular basis, please take 5 minutes to provide me with some feedback.