Scientific Distance Report

The Scientific Distance Report project consists of a software tool that works with the Publication Harvester (a software tool that downloads publications from PubMed). The Scientific Distance Report program searches the publications downloaded by the Publication Harvester, comparing pairs of scientists to find the degree by which their publications overlap.

The Publication Harvester and Scientific Distance Report software runs on Windows Vista and XP. It was written in C#, and requires .NET Framework 3.0.

The user manual describes installation and use of the Scientific Distance Report software. (It's also available as a PDF).

The software requirements specification that was used used to develop and maintain the Scientific Disance Report program can be found here.

Software downloads:

• The latest version of the Scientific Distance software can be downloaded here.
• Previous versions can be downloaded here.
• The C# source code can be downloaded from GitHub. The Scientific Distance Report project is an open source project.. You'll need Visual Studio to compile it. It compiles just fine in Visual C# 2013 Express Edition for Desktop, which you can download for free from Microsoft's website.

Quick start:

1. You'll need to start with one or two databases created by the Publication Harvester, so you'll need to follow its installation instructions first.
2. Download the latest version of the Scientific Distance Report zip file.
3. Extract the executable from the file and run it.

The following sample files may be helpful:

• inputFile.csv -- sample input file that works with the Scientific Distance Report software
• Harvester input.xls -- an input file for the Publication Harvester to generate data that matches the sample input file

This software is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The Scientific Distance Report, Publication Harvester and SC/Gen projects are maintained by Andrew Stellman of Stellman & Greene Consulting. If you have questions, comments, patches, or bug reports, please contact pubharvester@stellman-greene.com.

• ScientificDistance v1.0.3 -- 2008-03-10
  Fixed bug that inserted blank headings for publications without headings; fixed tab order in form
• ScientificDistance v1.0.2 -- 2008-02-28
  Added checkbox to exclude common publications between scientists, and added header rows to CSV input and output files
• ScientificDistance v1.0.1 -- 2008-02-22
  Initial version

We gratefully acknowledgement is given to the financial support of the National Science Foundation (Award SBE-0738142).