What’s new or currently rolling out

Automatic imports from PubMed

Site owners can configure their sites to import new citations automatically from PubMed once a day. You can customize the query to include publications from one or more authors. This will reduce the effort required to keep your publication list up-to-date, if you are publishing in a field that tracks articles in PubMed. Please visit Importing publication citations for more details about using this new feature.

This daily import feature complements our existing capabilities to bulk import publications from files. When first creating a site, site owners should use the file upload method to populate the site with an initial set of publications. Then you can set up a PubMed daily import to capture new publications.

Improvements to image fields

We are continuing to make improvements to our media management system. This month we added support for the new image browser to Publication Images. The Publication Image field appears inside the Publication Details fieldset. Adding a book cover or journal cover is a nice way to add visual interest to your publications list. Next time you use this field, you’ll notice that it has a new appearance and browsing experience, including the ability to set a focal point on the uploaded image.

Utility classes for borders

A new set of utility classes are available in our standard themes that will allow you to add a thin border to the top of widgets. Some site owners like to add a border for visual separation or accent. You can add a border with your theme’s primary, secondary, or tertiary color, black, or white. For more info see Customizing Theme Elements.

Maintenance, security, bug fixes, and enhancements

We fixed some bugs and optimized settings to make the platform even more accessible and user-friendly. Our development team updated a few Drupal modules and server packages (Drupal is the content management system underlying OpenScholar). We take care of the hosting and software, so you can focus on managing your content.

What’s coming soon

Content automation and AI

Now that we’ve added the ability to pull new publications from PubMed on a daily basis, we are planning a similar integration with ORCID. We are also planning ways to incorporate tools for generating and optimizing content as described in our AI feature roadmap.

Media system improvements

We will continue to update the places where users can add images and media to be more user-friendly and support the focal point feature. At present we are working to incorporate these changes into the Attach Files fields, a feature available on most content types. After that, we will be integrating it with widgets that require adding images or files, like Callout Banner or Media Gallery.

Welcome pages

We’ve designed a new landing page that can serve as the front porch for each institution’s OpenScholar install, so that anyone visiting the top-level domain will get a quick explanation of what the platform is and a list of public sites to explore. Next month we will begin rolling out these welcome pages and working with each organization to add an appropriate banner image of their campus or location. These new pages will make your OpenScholar sites more visible to search engines, peer institutions, and faculty and staff at your own institution.

What’s being retired

Nothing specific this month. Reminder that legacy themes are not actively developed and support for them is limited. Users are encouraged to transition to one of the fully supported standard themes. To learn more about the difference between standard and legacy themes, please see our page on Theme Life Cycles.

Thanks for reading

Questions or comments? Please reach out to our product team at support@theopenscholar.com.