ECMWF publications are now easier to find and access following a combined effort in cataloguing, integrating third-party identifiers, development, and design.
A redesigned Publications landing page (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/publications) provides quick access to the most popular and important collections in ECMWF’s eLibrary. The resulting search page makes it easier to filter publications that are part of the same collection, event or series. Search results for important ECMWF acronyms, such as IFS cycles (for example ‘CY43R3’), have been improved. The eLibrary also now includes additional types of publication, previously not indexed, such as education material and software packages.
Special pages elsewhere on the site have been created for Technical Memoranda (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/publications/technical-memoranda) and IFS Documentation (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/documentation-and-support/changes-ecmwf-model/ifs-documentation) to address the specific ways users have told us they like to access these documents. Improvements in the publications metadata have enabled us to develop these user interfaces based on the same underlying catalogue, i.e. without the need to duplicate content.
There have been two other significant improvements which make the publications of ECMWF and its staff more accessible to users beyond our own website. The first is the use of persistent Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for ECMWF publications, which we have started to assign in batches to existing publications, beginning with ECMWF Newsletter feature articles. The second is integration with ORCID, a persistent digital identifier which uniquely distinguishes ECMWF staff and their publications.
This latter integration enables us to remove from our catalogue the records of staff publications which are published by others, and focus our efforts on ECMWF publications only. Staff are responsible for maintaining their own lists of publications. These will eventually be reused, among other things to populate our staff profile pages (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/who-we-are/staff-profiles).
We are always interested in hearing from our users on how we can improve the ECMWF website. If you have an idea, criticism, or suggestion, you can contact us via the website contact form (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/contact-us).