I'm creating this topic on behalf of Paul Ducker (I hope he doesn't mind), since I also hold interest in the reintroduction of the remote hosting pending feature.
Paul, Please open a new thread next time ...
the sticking point in using it is that a number of the publications (as on your site for PublicPolicy.ie) are hosted elsewhere.
So you want publications hosted elsewhere to be listed, or not? If that's a feature you want, it's a feature that WP Publication Archive can support. The version coming out this month restores the remote hosting capabilities (which were disabled in openfile.php during the TimThumb remote code execution scare).
Open a new thread and link to it here so we can continue the conversation ...