Is there a way to validate refbacks?

Software Support
1

Is there any way to validate refbacks so that only good refbacks For example, we normally get refbacks like those listed below…but we are also getting a bunch of random/food/porn/etc refbacks.

2013-07-25 60 https://www.google.com/ Preliminary data on a new opioid risk assessment measure: The Brief Risk Interview — New Edit | Delete

2013-07-28 5 https://www.google.com/ Use of tincture of opium compared to oral morphine for the treatment of neonatal abstinence syndrome — New Edit | Delete

2013-07-30 37 https://www.google.com/ Comparison of efficacy between buprenorphine and tramadol in the detoxification of opioid (heroin)-dependent subjects — New Edit | Delete

2013-07-31 56 https://www.google.com/ Hypoglycemia during rapid methadone dose escalation — New Edit | Delete

2013-07-31 152 https://www.google.com/ Review article. Pharmacokinetic evaluation of hydrocodone/acetaminophen for pain management — New Edit | Delete

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Hi @radjr,

Have a look at the settings form for the referral plugin; you can enter a list of exclusions that will be ignored by the plugin.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

3

Hi @radjr, hi @asmecher, I would like to share some notes on refbacks:

  • there should be a possibility to manage them as a Journal Manager or editor, since often authors don’t check them (not to mention journals were authors don’t submit directly in OJS)
  • is there the possibility to clean past refbacks via exclusion list?

and on the exclusion list:

  • the default list doesn’t work any more, since it miss every “https”
  • it is not so clear that the hashes (#) are necessary, at first I thought the strings were commented
  • (I am not so sure about it) apparently the slash need to be escaped, for example:
#^https?:\/\/www.google.#
#^https?:\/\/r.search.yahoo.#
#^https?:\/\/www.bing.#
4

Hi @piero_tasso,

The ? after the s in https indicates that the character is optional, so both http and https should match.

The hashes are necessary, as they indicate the beginning and end of the regular expression.

Because the hashes are used rather than slashes to begin and end the regular expression, escaping of slashes shouldn’t be necessary.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

5

Yes I know, these are the regex that I use for all the journals, the default ones are obsolete (I can try to commit new regex in github)

I didn’t know that use of hashes, thanks!

6

Hi @piero_tasso,

Ah – I’ve added the ? to the default regular expressions, thanks for pointing it out!

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Public Knowledge Project Team

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