NAME

       Biblio::Citation::Compare - Perl extension for performing fuzzy comparisons between
       bibliographic citations

SYNOPSIS

         use Biblio::Citation::Compare 'sameWork','sameAuthors';

         sameWork(
           # first item
           {
               authors => ['Bourget, D','Lukasiak, Zbigniew'],
               title => "A paper with such and such a title",
               date => 2010
           },
           # second item
           {
               authors => ['Bourget, David J. R.','Lukasiak, Zbigniew'],
               title => "A paper with such nd such a tlitle",
               date => undef
           }
         );

         # true!

         sameAuthors(
           ['Dave Bourget','Z Lukasiak'],
           ['Bourget DJR','Zbigniew Z. Lukasiak']
         );

         # true!

DESCRIPTION

       This module exports two subroutines which perform fuzzy comparisons between citations
       (described using Perl hashes) and author lists. The subroutine attempt to determine if the
       citations and author lists refer to the same works and ordered lists of authors,
       respectively.

SUBROUTINES

   sameWork(hashref citation1, hashref citation2): boolean
       Takes as input two citations in a simple format illustrated in the synopsis. Returns true
       iff the two citations plausibly refer to the same work. A number of factors are taken into
       account to make the evaluation resistant to random variations. Among them: names are
       normalized and compared fuzzily using Text::Names, allowances are made for random typos,
       allowances are made for short and long versions of titles (esp with titles containing a
       colon), small but important variations as in "Paper title part 1" and "Paper title part 2"
       are taken into account. The algorithm has been used to merge multiple data sources on
       PhilPapers.org.

       Some advanced additional parameters are not explained here; they can only be explained by
       pointing to the source code. Their use should not normally be necessary.

   sameAuthors(arrayref list1, arrayref list2): boolean
       Returns true if the two lists are plausibly lists of the same authors. This is merely a
       convenient wrapper over Text::Names::samePerson.

   EXPORT
       None by default.

SEE ALSO

       See also Text::Names for name normalization.

AUTHOR

       David Bourget, http://www.dbourget.com

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright (C) 2011 by David Bourget

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.10.1 or, at your option, any later version of
       Perl 5 you may have available.