output preferred-citation

[remram44]

Currently cffconvert --validate leads to a traceback:

Exception: "1.2.0" is not a supported release. Instead, use one of "1.0.1", "1.0.2", "1.0.3", "1.1.0".

In addition I think cffconvert should output the preferred-citation, or have a flag to allow outputting the preferred-citation.

[jspaaks]

Hi folks,
Thanks for your interest in cffconvert. Please stand by while I'm updating cffconvert to also support Citation File Format 1.2.0. I hope to make a release within maybe 2 weeks.

I'm on the fence about supporting preferred-citation and references for the moment, need to think about it more later.

[remram44]

What do you mean? You don't want to support the full official schema?

[eddiebergman]

Hi @jspaaks,

An option for outputting the preferred citation is highly needed for scientific software which is produced from research.

[jspaaks]

Hi @eddiebergman and others who upvoted,
Just a bit of expectation management: I won't be able to work much on this in the near future, but can you elaborate on how you envision using cffconvert if it outputted preferred-citation?

[jspaaks]

Updated the issue title since cffconvert 2.0.0 with support for CFF 1.2.0 was released (https://pypi.org/project/cffconvert/)

[eddiebergman]

Hi @jspaaks,

Thanks for the reply and the tool :) I help manage quite a few libraries in the automl.org group, each of which the scientific paper is a much preferred citation point than the software itself.

I'm using cffconvert to validate the CITATION.cff file as well as validate the output generated in the various formats.

cffconverrt -f bibtex

It would be nice to have an option

cffconvert --preferred-citation -f bibtex

[1kastner]

Also from me great thanks for all the work and effort for this tool!

In addition to the idea of @eddiebergman I would like to have some kind of remark for the default export to indicate that a preferred citation even exists. When I currently export the citation with cffconvert, the message block is completely dropped. This behavior I consider not best practice. Maybe that hint could be maintained by turning the cff message into a bibtex note?

message: >-
  Please cite this software using the metadata from
  'preferred-citation'.

-->

@misc{YourReferenceHere,
author = {...},
note = {Please cite this software using the metadata from 'preferred-citation'.}
}

An even more complex solution might be to export both the software and the preferred-citation as independent bibtex entries but I can understand that that would be a bit more effort.

[1kastner]

One side note - when you add the CITATION.cff file to GitHub, it automatically resolved 'preferred-citation'. In the background this relies on the sister project https://github.com/citation-file-format/ruby-cff. Thus, maybe what was proposed as cffconvert --preferred-citation -f bibtex should in fact be the default and instead NOT resolving preferred-citation should be the special case?

[cgobat]

what was proposed as cffconvert --preferred-citation -f bibtex should in fact be the default and instead NOT resolving preferred-citation should be the special case

I agree—this is the more intuitive behavior, especially given that it's what the GitHub citation export feature already does. Plus, the field is called "preferred-citation" for a reason. Creators of CITATION.cff files provide it because that's how they want to be cited, and this tool should heed that.

[jnareb]

Also, currently it looks like there is no way to check if preferred-citation field is correct or not.

It looks like cffconvert --verify ignores errors in this field, while GitHub fails to parse CITATION.cff (but does not tell where the error is).

[jspaaks]

@jnareb

It looks like cffconvert --verify ignores errors in this field,

I don't think that's true, could you share the relevant CITATION.cff so I can have a look?

while GitHub fails to parse CITATION.cff (but does not tell where the error is).

Note GitHub uses ruby-cff, not cffconvert, for its conversion, so perhaps it's due to how ruby-cff ingests the data?

[alexlancaster]

Also from me great thanks for all the work and effort for this tool!

In addition to the idea of @eddiebergman I would like to have some kind of remark for the default export to indicate that a preferred citation even exists. When I currently export the citation with cffconvert, the message block is completely dropped. This behavior I consider not best practice. Maybe that hint could be maintained by turning the cff message into a bibtex note?

message: >-
  Please cite this software using the metadata from
  'preferred-citation'.

@misc{YourReferenceHere,
author = {...},
note = {Please cite this software using the metadata from 'preferred-citation'.}
}

I agree. There doesn't seem to be any other key in the CFF format that fits this need, other than message, and I don't think this is output in any of the supported formats.

For the Zenodo backend, I created PR #385 to pass the information in CFF message: key to the output .zenodo.json, to support exactly this use-case. Maybe a minimal solution (in lieu of preferred-citation support) would be to have the same for the BibTeX backend? (Currently it doesn't do that).

[alexlancaster]

Also from me great thanks for all the work and effort for this tool!

message: >-
  Please cite this software using the metadata from
  'preferred-citation'.

@misc{YourReferenceHere,
author = {...},
note = {Please cite this software using the metadata from 'preferred-citation'.}
}

For the Zenodo backend, I created PR #385 to pass the information in CFF message: key to the output .zenodo.json, to support exactly this use-case. Maybe a minimal solution (in lieu of preferred-citation support) would be to have the same for the BibTeX backend? (Currently it doesn't do that).

I updated my PR #385 to handle bibtex output too along the lines suggested by @1kastner , turned out it was fairly simple.