You can do this by extracting the multi-line data items in one go then replacing all but the last newline in each by using regular expressions. Like this

use strict;
use warnings;

# Slurp data.
#
{
    local $/ = undef;
    $_ = <DATA>;
}

# Construct regular expression to pull out each data
# item; use extended syntax and single-line matching
# (i.e. a . matches newline).
#
my $rxExtract = qr{(?xs)
   (.+?)          # capture one or more characters
                  #   with non-greedy matching
   (?=            # zero-width look ahead
      (?:         # alternation group, either
         \d+\t    # digits then a tab
         |        # or
         \z       # end of string
      )           # close alternation
   )              # close look-ahead
   };

# Global match to pull data items out of string. Then
# replace all but the last newline in each data item
# with tabs. Print items out.
#
my @items = /$rxExtract/g;
s/\n(?=.)/\t/g for @items;
print @items;

__END__
1    John Doe, Joe Bloggs    title    journal    Animal
Female
Protein
2    Mary Clary    title    magazine    Fish
Nor
Fowl
3    Charley Farley, Piggy Malone    title    book    The
Phantom
Raspberry
Blower
[download]

This produces

1    John Doe, Joe Bloggs    title    journal    Animal    Female    P
+rotein
2    Mary Clary    title    magazine    Fish    Nor    Fowl
3    Charley Farley, Piggy Malone    title    book    The    Phantom  
+  Raspberry    Blower
[download]

I hope this is of use.

Cheers,

JohnGG

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