Recently, I was asked to collect the research papers published by all the faculty member in our department. This made me to think, what might be the best way to collect and sort these papers?

I thought of coming up with a naming convention for these papers based on requirements as mentioned below.

1. On any given day, I should be able to pick the exact paper belonging to a particular faculty.
2. Keep track of number of papers published by each faculty.
3. Whether the paper is published in Journal or Conference.
4. Ability to sort the papers year wise.

Based on the above requirements I devised the following way to name each file.

1. Paper name is divided into six components. Each of these components is separated by a Hyphen.
2. First component is the type of paper. If the paper is published in International Journal then use the Keyword IJ, likewise for International Conference use IC, for National Journal use NJ and for National Conference use NC
3. Second component is the name of the concerned faculty. Use the first three letters of the faculty name. For e.g., if the faculty name is Patrick.G.S then the second component will be PAT.
4. Third component is the initials of the concerned faculty. So w.r.t. the above name the third component will be GS (exclude dots).
5. Fourth component is the month in which the paper was published. For e.g., if the paper is published in the month of March then use the numeral 03. (prefix 0 for single digits)
6. Fifth component is the year in which the paper was published. For e.g., if the paper is published in the year 2016 then it’ll be the fifth component.
7. Sixth component is the count of the number of papers the faculty has published under a particular category of IJ or IC or NJ or NC.

Based on the requirements discussed, if for e.g., Prof. Patrick.G.S has published in 2 International Journals and in 2 International Conferences then the nomenclature for these papers will be as shown below:

For International Journal

IJ-PAT-GS-03-2016-1

IJ-PAT-GS-05-2016-2

For International Conference

IC-PAT-GS-10-2016-1

IC-PAT-GS-11-2016-2