ReScience / template

Template for article submission

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Unable to include author suffix

schackartk opened this issue · comments

Currently, the way metadata.yaml is parsed does not allow for author suffixes. For example, when I publish I prefer to include my suffix, e.g. "Kenneth E. Schackart III". But with the current parser, "III" is taken to be my last name since it is just splitting the name on whitespace and taking the last piece to be the last name. This means that the copyright statement shows "K.E.S. III" and the footnote just shows "III 2023".

I see two obvious ways of addressing this:

  1. Do some more complex parsing of the name to determine if the last portion is a suffix.
  2. Add an (optional) suffix field in the metadata.yaml and handle that during parsing.

I will be opening a pull request taking the second approach. I think this is likely the more robust approach.

The pull request (#30) works for making metadata.tex and the article.pdf while including author name suffixes. I am not sure where else metadata.yaml is used on ReScience's side.

I have provided a second pull request (#31 ) which is simpler and has fewer changes to the code. Importantly, it does not require modification of metadata.yaml.

During the development of these pull requests, I realized that the code allows for names formatted as "Last, First M.I.". This scheme works with a suffix since it is splitting on the comma to get first and last names instead of splitting on white space.
One just needs to enter their name as "Last Suffix, First M.I." (e.g. "Schackart III, Kenneth E.").
If the editors wish to not accept either pull request, a comment could be added to metadata.yaml stating that if authors wish to include a suffix, format the name as "Last Suffix, First M.I." However, when doing this, you cannot have your name formatted as "First M.I. Last Suffix" in the author list.

I read all your contributions in reverse order :) I think we can go with the simpler comment in the metadata.yaml that would not break thing too much. We're transitioning to a new system (JOSS) and hopefully things will be more robust.

Thanks for taking a look! And I look forward to seeing the new system.

I'll submit a pull request with only an added comment to metadata.yaml and I will close my previous pull requests.

Until the transition is complete, anyone who wishes to can use my fork (from #31) that enables names to be formatted as "First M.I. Last Suffix" in the pdf and does not change metadata.yaml.