OPUS4 BibTeX Module

This module supports importing documents in the BibTeX format.

While exporting documents' metadata in the BibTeX format is already working in OPUS4, the code is not yet located in this module.

Importing BibTeX without user interaction is not really possible because BibTeX files come in many flavors often with custom fields that are not part of any standard. Therefore, it is necessary to allow the user to decide on custom mappings and interpretations of the fields in the specific BibTeX file.

Requirements

For processing of special characters in BibTeX files the Pandoc tool is needed by the BibTeX parser of OPUS4.

Please make sure that you install / use a recent version of Pandoc, at least version 2.17. The current implementation was not tested against older Pandoc versions.

In Ubuntu / Debian based Linux systems Pandoc can be installed using apt.

$ sudo apt install pandoc

To check the version of Pandoc that has been installed, run:

$ pandoc -v

To check for the latest version number of Pandoc, you can browse to https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases.

The BibTeX import in this module was developed and heavily tested against Pandoc version 2.9 (released in May 2020) which is shipped with recent Ubuntu versions (20.10 and 21.04).

Configuration Options

The default settings for the import of BibTeX files are located in src\Import\import.ini. That file should not be edited locally. It is possible to extend or modify the settings in the global OPUS 4 configuration.

Field Mappings

You can register an arbitrary number of field mappings (see below). Each field mapping needs a name, that is part of the key. You can use the name default to replace the default mappingThe only option supported right now is file for the name of an external JSON field mapping configuration file. If the file is not specified with an absolute path, the base path needs to be specified in bibtex.mappingsBasePath.

bibtex.mappingsBasePath = APPLICATION_PATH "/application/config/bibtex"
bibtex.mappings.default.file = custom-default-mapping.json
bibtex.mappings.custom1.file = custom-mapping.json

The default field mapping is given by src/Import/default-mapping.json.

Document Type Mapping

An important step in mapping BibTex records to OPUS4 metadata documents is to determine the OPUS document type a given BibTex type is mapped to. You can define custom mappings between a BibTeX type btype and a OPUS4 document type otype in the following manner:

bibtex.entryTypes.btype = otype

Please note that BibTeX type names used in the type mapping are not restricted to the 14 official BibTeX types. It is allowed to define custom type mappings for unknown BibTeX types, e.g.

bibtex.entryTypes.journal = article

You can provide a default OPUS4 document type that is used when no mapping has been defined for a BibTeX entry type. The default fallback is misc.

bibtex.defaultDocumentType = misc

Field Mapping

A field mapping specifies how values in certain BibTeX fields are mapped onto OPUS4 metadata fields. A field mapping is provided by a configuration file. At the moment OPUS4 supports configuration files in the JSON format only. It is possible to manage several field mappings in one OPUS4 instance.

A default field mapping is given by src/Import/default-mapping.json.

The minimal definition of a field mapping configuration file looks like:

{
  "name": "default",
  "description": "Default BibTeX Mapping Configuration.",
  "mapping": [
    …
  ]
}

where name is the (arbitrary) name of the field mapping and description allows you to specify the intended use case for which the given field mapping is suited for. A field mapping consists of one to many rules, given in the mapping list. Please note, that the order of the given mapping rules is meaningful – mapping rules that occur later in the list have a higher precedence and can overwrite previously assigned values of OPUS4 document fields with new values.

Field Mapping Rules

Each mapping rule must specify at least a name in the corresponding name key, e.g.

{
  "name": "publishedYear"
}

In this case the BibTeX processor tries to instantiate the class PublishedYear (in the default namespace of rule classes, Opus\Bibtex\Import\Rules). If the rule class does not exist, an instance of SimpleRule is created. This class performs a simple one-to-one-mapping between a BibTeX field (given in bibtexField) and an OPUS metadata field (given in opusField) without further processing, e.g.

{
  "name": "issue",
  "options": {
    "bibtexField": "number",
    "opusField": "Issue"
  }
}

You can add custom rule classes (which needs to implement RuleInterface), even from other namespaces. In this case you need to specify the namespace explicitly, e.g.

{
  "name": "year",
  "class": "Opus\\Bibtex\\Custom\\Year"
}

OPUS4 provides you with plenty of pre-defined rule mapping classes that can be reused to formulate custom field mappings, even complex ones (see below).

If the rule class in use allows optional configuration (by appropriate setter methods), you can pass in configuration property values in the following manner:

{
  "name": "pdfUrl",
  "class": "Note",
  "options": {
    "bibtexField": "pdfurl",
    "messagePrefix": "URL of the PDF: ",
    "visibility": "public"
  }
}

In this example the processor maps the content of BibTeX field pdfurl to the value (message) of an OPUS Note object by handing the mapping process over to an instance of Note – a class that is shipped with OPUS4. Additionally, the options messagePrefix and visibility allow to add a fixed prefix to the Note's message and to control the visibility of the Note.

Another example mapping entry is given by the rule:

{
  "name": "belongsToBibliography",
  "options": {
    "value": false
  }
}

which sets the value of the belongsToBibliography field of an OPUS document to a fixed value (false in this example) independently of certain BibTeX fields.

Mapping to Enrichments

BibTeX fields can be mapped to enrichment fields. The mapping needs a unique name and the mapping class is called Enrichment. The name of the BibTeX field and the enrichment key need to be specified as options.

{
    "name": "LocalId",
    "class": "Enrichment",
    "options": {
        "bibtexField": "LocalId",
        "enrichmentKey": "local-id"
    }
}

In the example above a custom BibTeX field "LocalId" will be mapped to the enrichment "local-id".

Pre-defined rule classes

OPUS4 provides a number of pre-defined rule classes (located in namespace Opus\Bibtex\Import\Rules):

Base rule classes

OPUS4 supports several ways to create custom rule implementations. Each rule class has to implement the interface RuleInterface.

A custom rule implementation can be defined by creating a class that extends one of the following base rule classes:

Alternatively, you can extend one of the pre-defined rule classes listed above and adapt it to your needs.