Unlinkified links and missing links in Further Reading sections
mstimberg opened this issue · comments
Hi everyone. According to the contribution guidelines, you prefer issues to pull requests (even though this might only be aimed at the content of the lessons), so here we go:
Most of the tutorials have a further_reading.md file with a reference list, and most of them have links to the material (DOI etc.). Unfortunately, these are a bit inconvient to use, since the links are not "linkified", i.e. you have to copy & paste them. Many markdown renderers (including GitHub's) automatically linkify URLS, but MyST syntax requires them to be written as <https://example.com> or [link text](https://example.com).
I think it would be helpful to do this (running a little script) for all the references in the further reading sections.
My suggestion would be to let general links (e.g. to a book on an author's website) keep the full URL, but use e.g. [doi:10.1038/s41583-018-0038-8](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-018-0038-8) (doi:10.1038/s41583-018-0038-8) for DOI.
I also thought of something else: many of the references are open access, but some of them aren't, and it might be helpful for students which is which. How about putting a corresponding logo (the PLoS "open padlock" or "closed padlock" logos) at the end of the link? The information should be available via the unpaywall API. In fact, for the non-open access references, this API can sometimes also give an open access alternative, e.g. a preprint. I can imagine that many students would benefit from this, since their university might otherwise not provide the access they need.
Sorry about the long post, I hope I am not bothering you with something you consider unimportant. If you are interested in these changes, would you prefer a big pull request with everything I mentioned above (again, assuming that you think it is useful)? Or would you rather prefer several pull requests?
Hey, @mstimberg thank you very much for your comments/suggestions. Indeed all these points are valid and important. I have in my to-do list to update the links, but if you want you can proceed!
The reason we do not prefer PRs, is that we follow a specific process when we update notebooks. However, now that you want to change the further_reading.md files, I think we will be fine!
Just a personal taste: I prefer to have the links as:
doi: [10.1113/jphysiol.1952.sp004764](https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.1952.sp004764)
Also I do agree to add the preprint alternative when a paper is not open access
A big pull request with links and logos would be great, then you can ping me to approve it.
Ah, I started working on this, but I just saw that you already fixed most of the issues :) Are you still interested in the preprint/logo thing, or do you prefer working on this as well?