Connotea
Encyclopedia
Connotea is a free
online reference management service for scientists, researchers, and clinicians, created in December 2004 by Nature Publishing Group
. It is one of a breed of social bookmarking tools
, similar to CiteULike
and del.icio.us
, where users can save links to their favourite websites.
Connotea is aimed primarily at scientists (though the user community is rapidly growing throughout academic disciplines), and while users may bookmark any webpage they choose, it incorporates special functionality for certain academic resources. Connotea recognises a number of scientific websites and will automatically collect metadata for the article or page being bookmarked, including author and publication names. It is also possible to add non-recognised webpages, by manually entering information. An alternative method of adding an article is to retrieve the Connotea form and add the Digital Object Identifier
(DOI) for the article. Information about the material should then be retrieved automatically using CrossRef, the official DOI registration point. This function means that it is possible to quickly retrieve the reference for a print article that has an electronic counterpart with a DOI.
When saving an article to Connotea, users "tag" the article with keywords of their choice which they can later use to find it again. By categorising articles with relevant keywords e.g. "C. elegans
", the social aspect of Connotea is developed. The system recognises users who are bookmarking the same papers or using the same keywords, and alerts them to potentially related material. Allowing completely free tagging, a folksonomy
will gradually develop. By default, links posted to Connotea are publicly viewable, allowing network effects to build up rapidly, but it also possible for users to keep selected links private, either indefinitely or until a specified date and time. Connotea also provides RSS feeds
, allowing users to keep track of articles posted under interesting tags or by users with similar interests.
Connotea has the capacity to export the references in RIS
format to a citation manager program
. This means that it is possible to save references when working on a computer without such bibliographic software installed and import them into this software for citing at later stage.
In September 2005, Connotea won the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers Award for Publishing Innovation, and in November 2005 was shortlisted for the International Information Industry awards in the Best Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Product category.
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
online reference management service for scientists, researchers, and clinicians, created in December 2004 by Nature Publishing Group
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Publishing Group is an international publishing company that publishes academic journals, online databases, and services across the life, physical, chemical and applied sciences and clinical medicine...
. It is one of a breed of social bookmarking tools
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared, merely bookmarks that reference them....
, similar to CiteULike
CiteULike
CiteULike is based on the principle of social bookmarking and is aimed to promote and to develop the sharing of scientific references amongst researchers. In the same way that it is possible to catalog web pages or photographs , scientists can share information on academic papers with specific...
and del.icio.us
Del.icio.us
Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, and by the end of 2008, the service claimed more than 5.3 million users and 180 million unique bookmarked URLs...
, where users can save links to their favourite websites.
Connotea is aimed primarily at scientists (though the user community is rapidly growing throughout academic disciplines), and while users may bookmark any webpage they choose, it incorporates special functionality for certain academic resources. Connotea recognises a number of scientific websites and will automatically collect metadata for the article or page being bookmarked, including author and publication names. It is also possible to add non-recognised webpages, by manually entering information. An alternative method of adding an article is to retrieve the Connotea form and add the Digital Object Identifier
Digital object identifier
A digital object identifier is a character string used to uniquely identify an object such as an electronic document. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found...
(DOI) for the article. Information about the material should then be retrieved automatically using CrossRef, the official DOI registration point. This function means that it is possible to quickly retrieve the reference for a print article that has an electronic counterpart with a DOI.
When saving an article to Connotea, users "tag" the article with keywords of their choice which they can later use to find it again. By categorising articles with relevant keywords e.g. "C. elegans
Caenorhabditis elegans
Caenorhabditis elegans is a free-living, transparent nematode , about 1 mm in length, which lives in temperate soil environments. Research into the molecular and developmental biology of C. elegans was begun in 1974 by Sydney Brenner and it has since been used extensively as a model...
", the social aspect of Connotea is developed. The system recognises users who are bookmarking the same papers or using the same keywords, and alerts them to potentially related material. Allowing completely free tagging, a folksonomy
Folksonomy
A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content; this practice is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging...
will gradually develop. By default, links posted to Connotea are publicly viewable, allowing network effects to build up rapidly, but it also possible for users to keep selected links private, either indefinitely or until a specified date and time. Connotea also provides RSS feeds
RSS (file format)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
, allowing users to keep track of articles posted under interesting tags or by users with similar interests.
Connotea has the capacity to export the references in RIS
RIS (file format)
RIS is a standardized tag format developed by Research Information Systems, Incorporated to enable citation programs to exchange data.It is supported by a number of reference managers...
format to a citation manager program
Reference management software
Reference management software, citation management software or personal bibliographic management software is software for scholars and authors to use for recording and utilising bibliographic citations . Once a citation has been recorded, it can be used time and again in generating bibliographies,...
. This means that it is possible to save references when working on a computer without such bibliographic software installed and import them into this software for citing at later stage.
In September 2005, Connotea won the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers Award for Publishing Innovation, and in November 2005 was shortlisted for the International Information Industry awards in the Best Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) Product category.