Publications layer plan

Preliminary schema and intake plan for a resource-evidence publications layer. This is not a DePaul-wide bibliography project.

Report date: 2026-05-30
Registry: data/publications.yaml
Person links: data/person_publication_links.yaml
Resource links: data/publication_resource_links.yaml
Export: scripts/export_graph_tables.py → data/graph_exports/

Current state (2026-05-31): 34 publications · 39 person–publication links · 6 publication–resource links (4 graph-included after quality review). Four discovery batches completed; see §10.

1. Why not a complete DePaul publication inventory

The Hardware Technology Resource Map exists to document facilities, equipment, access, and technical collaboration paths — not institutional research output metrics.

A full publication inventory would:

Dilute graph signal with humanities, policy, and non-technical work unrelated to labs or instruments
Imply coauthorship networks that look like facility collaboration without evidence
Require ongoing sync with ORS, schools, and external indexes outside map maintenance scope
Duplicate work better done by libraries, Pure/Symplectic, or institutional CRIS systems

Publications belong in this repo only as evidence objects when they document resource use, capability, or cross-unit technical work tied to map entities.

2. Recommended seed-author strategy (using `people.yaml`)

Start from the people registry in data/people.yaml (see full-refresh-report.md for current count), prioritized by hard-tech adjacency:

Priority	Person categories	Rationale
1	Lab/center directors and faculty_lead on CDM, CSH, MUS, TTS resources	Most likely to publish methods using named facilities
2	CyberLabs / RoME / VIDA / CSH instrumentation affiliated faculty	Equipment-heavy research
3	Grant PIs in `data/grants.yaml` with equipment or lab keywords in titles/abstracts	May cite facilities in acknowledgments
4	Production/technical staff only when authorship is documented on official pages	Rare; avoid staff bibliography fishing

Do not bulk-import all authors from a college or department page.

Suggested pilot cohort (~10–15 people): directors of CDM-001, CDM-004, CDM-005, CDM-011, CSH-001, CSH-007, PER-032 (Landahl), PER-064 (Schrank), PER-013 (Godage), plus grant PIs with clear hardware abstracts (e.g. Federated Learning, equipment grants).

3. Inclusion criteria

Include a publication when all apply:

Hard-tech relevance — fabrication, instrumentation, sensing, imaging, HPC, media production technology, cyber-physical systems, GIS/analytics tied to map resources, or similar
DePaul connection — at least one author matches a people.yaml record with evidence
Resource-map utility — supports a facility link, capability claim, grant follow-on, or cross-unit technical thread
Evidence in intake — title/year/venue from an allowed source (see §8); resource connection quoted when linking to resource_id

4. Exclusion criteria

Exclude publications that:

Have no plausible link to a map resource, grant, or technical capability
Are teaching materials, op-eds, or policy commentary without instrumentation
Mention DePaul only as author affiliation with no methods/facility detail
Are planned outputs (manuscript in preparation) — those belong in grants, not publications
Come from bulk API harvest without per-record resource evidence review
Duplicate entries across DOI, arXiv ID, and publisher URL (pick one canonical record)

5. Warnings: author-name ambiguity

Common names (e.g. “J. Smith”) may match wrong person_id
Name variants (Daniela Raicu / Daniela Stan Raicu) require alias notes
Students not in people.yaml should not auto-create people — record as person_name with person_id: null or add via separate people intake
Corporate authorship (“DePaul University”) is not a person link

Always record ambiguity in notes and prefer confidence: low until verified against an official DePaul profile page.

6. Warnings: old affiliations

Publications from before a faculty member joined DePaul may still acknowledge current DePaul labs if methods were conducted here — verify dates
Alumni authorship does not automatically link to current map resources
External postdoc or sabbatical affiliations may appear in author lists without DePaul facility use

Do not link related_resources based on author’s current map role alone.

7. Warnings: coauthorship ≠ collaboration

Shared authorship does not imply shared facility access or cross-lab collaboration edges
Large consortia papers may list DePaul as one node among many — link people, not inferred institution–institution cliques
Acknowledgments sections are stronger evidence for publication → resource links than author lists

Use person_publication_links for authorship; use publication_resource_links only with explicit methods/acknowledgment quotes.

8. Suggested sources for future publication searches

Use in this order (future passes only — not executed in schema pass):

Source	Use when
Official DePaul faculty/lab profile pages	Publications listed on depaul.edu or official lab sites already linked in `people.yaml`
Lab and center pages (CyberLabs, VIDA, RoME, CSH facilities)	Selected papers highlighted as outputs
Google Scholar	Only when URL is linked from an official DePaul page (no broad scraping)
ORCID	Only when ORCID URL is on official DePaul profile
Crossref / DOI metadata	Resolve title, year, authors after a paper is already identified
PubMed	Biomedical / health-informatics topics only (VIDA, CCHE, biology instrumentation)
Semantic Scholar / OpenAlex	Secondary enrichment for DOI disambiguation — not primary discovery

Avoid in early passes: Scopus API, wholesale Scholar queries, department publication lists without resource filtering.

9. Recommended next step: small pilot search

Pick 5 directors from the pilot cohort (§2).
For each, read official DePaul profile or lab page already in depaul_profile_url — copy 0–3 papers that mention labs, instruments, or fabrication.
Intake via publication-data-intake-template.md.
Add person_publication_links with include_in_graph: true only for listed authorship.
Add publication_resource_links only when methods/acknowledgments name a resource (e.g. “CyberLabs”, “McGowan NMR”, “Idea Realization Lab”).
Run python3 scripts/export_graph_tables.py and review CSV row counts.
Document pilot results in an updated section of this plan before scaling.

Target for pilot: 5–15 publications, ≥3 publication–resource links with explicit evidence.

10. Lessons from batches 1–4

Four conservative discovery passes (seed cohort, ISE/CSH/ID expansion, hard-tech faculty, directors/grants cohort) produced 34 publications and 39 person–publication links, but only 6 publication–resource links — 4 remain graph-included after quality review downgraded two profile-inference edges (PRL-PUB-003, PRL-PUB-004).

Publication–resource edges are high-evidence edges, not default edges. Batches 3 and 4 correctly added zero new publication–resource links because selected papers lacked explicit facility acknowledgment. Person–publication intake alone is the normal outcome.

Lesson	Source
Authorship verified → person–publication link OK	All batches
Resource linkage requires quoted facility/methods/acknowledgment text	PRL-PUB-001/002 (strong) vs PRL-PUB-003/004 (downgraded)
Profile method lists ≠ resource use	PRL-PUB-004 (Grice Lab)
Center director ≠ center infrastructure in paper	PPL-033 (Wagner/SPARK qualitative study excluded from graph)
Grant abstract guides search, not resource edge	Bystriansky wolf eel vs Poeciliid grant
Coauthorship stays on person–publication edges only	No person–person collaboration from pubs
~1 weak inclusion per batch → quality review pass	Cohort 4 Wagner case
Batch size 8–10 people remains appropriate	Throughput ~8–9 includes per batch

Full rules: publication-intake-rules.md. QA and batch summaries: publications-quality-review.md.

Regeneration commands

python3 scripts/export_graph_tables.py
python3 -m mkdocs build --strict

Empty publication YAML files export header-only CSVs (0 data rows) without error.

Schema pass only. No public Publications tab, no web crawl, no Neo4j import.