Using the doi2cite filter

The doi2cite is a fantastic filter by @korintje that extends citeproc and allows you to add citations using only the work’s DOI.

In essence, doi2cite searches the Markdown documents for citations that start with doi:, DOI:, doi.org/ or https://doi.org/, extracts the DOI, queries CrossRef for the bibliographic information, writes it to a local BibTeX-file and replaces the citation key by the proper BibTeX key. Now citeproc can process the citation and will do the rest. I have adapted the filter to work with multiple bibliography files and and have provide additional post-processing functions to streamline the use with R Markdown. The key issue to solve here is that doi2cite replaces DOI with BibTeX handles in the intermediate Markdown document, but not in the R Markdown source file. Doing this requires an additional post-processing step that is done by rmdfilter::replace_doi_citations().

To use the doi2cite filter, we need to do two things:

1. Use rmdfiltr::add_doi2cite_filter() to add an argument to the call to pandoc
2. Add the the designated file “__from_DOI.bib” (it currently has to be this file name!) to the bibliography field of the YAML front matter

When adding the filters to pandoc_args the R code needs to be preceded by !expr to declare it as to-be-interpreted expression.

bibliograph: "__from_DOI.bib"
output:
  html_document:
    pandoc_args: !expr rmdfiltr::add_doi2cite_filter(args = NULL)

In the resulting HTML file, the citation tags @doi:10.1037/xlm0001360 will be rendered as Marsh et al. (2024). However, the DOI-based citation tag remains in the source R Markdown file. To replace it with the BibTeX citation handle requires an additional post-processing step.

A makeshift solution to this is to call rmdfiltr::replace_resolved_doi_citations() in the R Markdown document. The function will check the bibliography files in the YAML front matter for matching DOIs and replace the DOI in the R Markdown document with the corresponding reference handles. Because doi2cite is run after rmdfiltr::replace_resolved_doi_citations(), this will only work for DOI citations that were resolved in a previous knitting process.

To resolve this remaining issue, it is necessary to create a custom R Markdown format. Now, we can add to the doi2cite filter to the pandoc arguments and add rmdfiltr::replace_resolved_doi_citations() to the post processor. The following is sketch of the essential parts of the custom format:

my_format <- rmarkdown::output_format(
  pre_processor = \(...) {
    rmdfiltr::add_doi2cite_filter(args = NULL)
  }
  , post_processor = \(input_file, metadata, ...) {
    rmdfiltr::post_process_doi_citations(input_file, metadata$bibliography)
  }
  , ...
)

With these pre- and post-processors, the DOI-based citations will be replaced by the BibTeX citation handles in the R Markdown source file. That is, the citation tag @doi:10.1037/xlm0001360 will be replaced by @Marsh_2024 in the R Markdown source file and rendered to Marsh et al. (2024) in the output.

References

Marsh, John E., Mark J. Hurlstone, Alexandre Marois, Linden J. Ball, Stuart B. Moore, François Vachon, Sabine J. Schlittmeier, et al. (2024). Changing-State Irrelevant Speech Disrupts Visual–Verbal but Not Visual–Spatial Serial Recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001360.