Maëlle Salmon

Our website is based on Markdown content rendered with Hugo.Markdown
content is in some cases knit from R Markdown, but with [less
functionality than if one rendered R Markdown to html as in the blogdown
default](https://bookdown.org/yihui/blogdown/output-format.html).In
particular, we cannot use the usual BibTex + CSL + Pandoc-citeproc
[dance](https://github.com/rstudio/distill/issues/45) to handle a
bibliography.Thankfully, using the rOpenSci package RefManageR, we can
still make our own bibliography from a BibTeX file without formatting
references by hand.In this post we shall present our custom workflow for
inserting citations, as well as more mainstream tools.

## Usual citation workflow in Rmd

To repeat information presented in [Nicholas Tierney's excellent online
book "R Markdown for
Scientists"](https://rmd4sci.njtierney.com/citing-articles-bibliography-styles.html),
to get a bibliography we have to perform several steps. We must...

- reference a bibliography style in the document YAML metadata, with
  entries such as the one below for R,

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
  @Manual{my-citation-key-for-r,    title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},    author = {{R Core Team}},    organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},    address = {Vienna, Austria},    year = {2020},    url = {https://www.R-project.org/},  }
```
:::

- insert citations using their key, e.g. `@my-citation-key-for-r` for
  the entry above,

- and, optionally, use CSL to control the look of the references list;
  and a bookdown output format to have the bibliography placed somewhere
  else than the end.

### Handy R packages for references: citr and knitcitations

Some R tools out there simplify part of the workflow:

- [citr](https://github.com/crsh/citr) by [Frederik
  Aust](https://github.com/crsh) provides an RStudio add-in to search
  for references in a .bib file, inserting the key in the document
  (mimicking tools you could find in Microsoft Word);

- [knitcitations](https://github.com/cboettig/knitcitations) by [Carl
  Boettiger](/author/carl-boettiger) allows you to not only use the
  keys, but also DOIs and URLs to cite a paper. E.g.
  `citet("10.1098/rspb.2013.1372")` will create a citation to
  `@Boettiger_2013` after querying the web; and
  `write.bibtex(file = "references.bib")` will allow you to cache
  entries in a bibliography file.

Both these packages import
[RefManageR](https://docs.ropensci.org/RefManageR/) by [Mathew W.
McLean](http://mwmclean.github.io/), a package that *provides tools for
importing and working with bibliographic references*, and that has been
[peer-reviewed by
rOpenSci](https://github.com/ropensci/software-review/issues/119).

## Citation workflow without Pandoc, with RefManageR

Now, for generating Markdown content like this post source, one cannot
use the tools presented earlier.In our blog guide, we explain that
citations are footnotes [whose text is APA
formatted](https://blogguide.ropensci.org/technical.html#addcitation)
and we explain how to [find that citation text for a package or
article](https://blogguide.ropensci.org/technical.html#how-to-find-citation-text-for-a-package-or-article).In
most cases, authors are only citing a few references, so that is
fine.However, sometimes authors would like to use an existing .bib file,
that they might have e.g. exported from
[Zotero](https://www.zotero.org/).

Thankfully, using RefManageR, we can provide a workflow for adding
citations from a bib file, by creating functions similar to
knitcitations' functions.

In the following examples, we'll use the .bib file below,

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
@Manual{my-citation-key-for-r,  title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},  author = {{R Core Team}},  organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},  address = {Vienna, Austria},  year = {2020},  url = {https://www.R-project.org/},}@Article{refmanager,    author = {Mathew William McLean},    title = {RefManageR: Import and Manage BibTeX and BibLaTeX References in R},    journal = {The Journal of Open Source Software},    year = {2017},    doi = {10.21105/joss.00338},  }  @Manual{jqr,    title = {jqr: Client for 'jq', a 'JSON' Processor},    author = {Rich FitzJohn and Jeroen Ooms and Scott Chamberlain and {Stefan Milton Bache}},    year = {2018},    note = {R package version 1.1.0},    url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=jqr},  }
```
:::

### Create a bibliography object

We'll start by creating a `BibEntry` object by calling
`RefManageR::ReadBib()`:

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
mybib <- RefManageR::ReadBib("refs.bib", check = FALSE) mybib
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
[1] R. FitzJohn, J. Ooms, S. Chamberlain, et al. _jqr: Client for 'jq',a 'JSON' Processor_. R package version 1.1.0. 2018. <URL:https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=jqr>.[2] M. W. McLean. "RefManageR: Import and Manage BibTeX and BibLaTeXReferences in R". In: _The Journal of Open Source Software_ (2017).DOI: 10.21105/joss.00338.[3] R Core Team. _R: A Language and Environment for StatisticalComputing_. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Vienna, Austria,2020. <URL: https://www.R-project.org/>.
```

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
class(mybib)
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
[1] "BibEntry" "bibentry"
```

### Create and use a cite function

Then in another R code chunk, we'll create a function which writes the
citations in the format we want. Our citation format is a footnote:
`[^key]`.

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
cite <- function(key, bib = mybib) {  # create a silent reference so RefManageR  # knows we've used this entry  RefManageR::NoCite(bib, key)  # create the string we need in the Markdown document  paste0("[^", key, "]")}
```
:::

From the three entries in the BibTeX file, let us cite two of them.

In the Rmd file we write:

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
what a nice package`r cite("refmanager")` built on top of R`r cite("my-citation-key-for-r")`.
```
:::

Which when knit, becomes this in the md file:

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
what a nice package[^refmanager] built on top of R[^my-citation-key-for-r].
```
:::

Which when rendered by Hugo, becomes this in the html file: what a nice
package^[1](#fn:1){.footnote-ref role="doc-noteref"}^ built on top of
R^[2](#fn:2){.footnote-ref role="doc-noteref"}^.

### Print the references list

Finally, for the bibliography to appear, we need to add a call to
`RefManageR::PrintBibliography()`, after defining our own bibstyle.This
way, each entry will appear in the Markdown file as

``` {tabindex="0"}
[^mykey]: <APA string>
```

To get the first part (`[^mykey]`), we use the `fmtPrefix` of
`tools::bibstyle()`.To get the second part (`<APA string>`), we read
through some [R source
code](https://github.com/wch/r-source/blob/28f8367a5514cc0d014cf2aa9e7ce909cd2050af/src/library/tools/R/bibstyle.R),
in which we found how to create a function that correctly adds DOIs and
URLs.Note that in our case the order of appearance of entries within the
references list in the Markdown file is not important at all, since the
Hugo Markdown handler, Goldmark, will reorder them based on order of
appearance in the text.

To produce the bibliography, we combined everything together in an R
code chunk. For example, the chunk below was used at the very end of the
R Markdown file producing this post.It came before the definition of
another, non-citation, footnote.^[3](#fn:3){.footnote-ref
role="doc-noteref"}^

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
```r get_doi <- function(paper) {  if (is.null(paper$doi)) {    ""  } else{    paste0(" , https://doi.org/", paper$doi)  }}apa_style <- tools::bibstyle("apa", sortKeys = function(refs) seq_along(refs),    fmtPrefix = function(paper) paste0("[^", attr(paper,"key"), "]:"),    extraInfo = function(paper) paste0(paper$url, get_doi(paper)),    .init = TRUE)RefManageR::PrintBibliography(mybib, .opts = list(bib.style = "apa", sorting = ""))```
```
:::

This produces the following in markdown, which is then used by Hugo to
produce the citations for this post.

``` {tabindex="0"}
[^refmanager]: McLean MW (2017). "RefManageR: Import and Manage BibTeXand BibLaTeX References in R." _The Journal of Open Source Software_., https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00338.[^my-citation-key-for-r]: R Core Team (2020). _R: A Language andEnvironment for Statistical Computing_. R Foundation for StatisticalComputing, Vienna, Austria. https://www.R-project.org/.
```

### Workflow summary

To summarize our workflow

- Instead of referencing the bibliography file in the Document metadata
  we create an object referring to it in an R code chunk by calling
  `RefManageR::ReadBib()`;

- We use a custom-made `cite()` function using `RefManageR::NoCite()` to
  signal the use of the reference, and string manipulation to add it in
  the correct format;

- We make the bibliography appear using `RefManageR::PrintBibliography`
  and `tools::bibstyle()` in a chunk with the `results="asis"` option.
  We put that chunk exactly where we want the bibliography to appear.

## Do even more with BibTeX files

The workflow presented earlier was a cool example of using RefManageR to
use a BibTeX file.There are two other packages that are worth knowing
about for more .bib gymnastics: bib2df and handlr.

### bib2df: from BibTeX to tibble

[bib2df](https://docs.ropensci.org/bib2df/) by [Philipp
Ottolinger](http://www.ottlngr.de/)^[4](#fn:4){.footnote-ref
role="doc-noteref"}^ is a package that converts bibliography data from
.bib to `tibble` and vice versa.Like RefManageR, it has been
[peer-reviewed by
rOpenSci](https://github.com/ropensci/software-review/issues/124).In the
[words of one the reviewers, Adam
Sparks](https://github.com/ropensci/software-review/issues/124#issuecomment-308617830),
bib2df is *"something that is simple and does one job and does it
well."*.

Let's try it on our .bib file.

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
df <- bib2df::bib2df("refs.bib")df
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
# A tibble: 3 x 28  CATEGORY BIBTEXKEY ADDRESS ANNOTE AUTHOR BOOKTITLE CHAPTER CROSSREF EDITION  <chr>    <chr>     <chr>   <chr>  <list> <chr>     <chr>   <chr>    <chr>  1 MANUAL   my-citat… Vienna… <NA>   <chr … <NA>      <NA>    <NA>     <NA>   2 ARTICLE  refmanag… <NA>    <NA>   <chr … <NA>      <NA>    <NA>     <NA>   3 MANUAL   jqr       <NA>    <NA>   <chr … <NA>      <NA>    <NA>     <NA>   # … with 19 more variables: EDITOR <list>, HOWPUBLISHED <chr>,#   INSTITUTION <chr>, JOURNAL <chr>, KEY <chr>, MONTH <chr>, NOTE <chr>,#   NUMBER <chr>, ORGANIZATION <chr>, PAGES <chr>, PUBLISHER <chr>,#   SCHOOL <chr>, SERIES <chr>, TITLE <chr>, TYPE <chr>, VOLUME <chr>,#   YEAR <dbl>, URL <chr>, DOI <chr>
```

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
bib2df::df2bib(df)
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
@Manual{my-citation-key-for-r,  Address = {Vienna, Austria},  Author = {R Core Team},  Organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},  Title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},  Year = {2020},  Url = {https://www.R-project.org/}}@Article{refmanager,  Author = {Mathew William McLean},  Journal = {The Journal of Open Source Software},  Title = {RefManageR: Import and Manage BibTeX and BibLaTeX References in R},  Year = {2017},  Doi = {10.21105/joss.00338}}@Manual{jqr,  Author = {Rich FitzJohn and Jeroen Ooms and Scott Chamberlain and {Stefan Milton Bache},  Note = {R package version 1.1.0},  Title = {jqr: Client for 'jq', a 'JSON' Processor},  Year = {2018},  Url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=jqr}}
```

Note that RefManageR has a similar export function.

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
library("magrittr")df2 <- "refs.bib" %>%  RefManageR::ReadBib() %>%  as.data.frame()df2
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
                      bibtypemy-citation-key-for-r  Manualrefmanager            Articlejqr                    Manual                                                                                  titlemy-citation-key-for-r           R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computingrefmanager            RefManageR: Import and Manage BibTeX and BibLaTeX References in Rjqr                                            jqr: Client for 'jq', a 'JSON' Processor                                                                                             authormy-citation-key-for-r                                                                 {R Core Team}refmanager                                                                    Mathew William McLeanjqr                   Rich FitzJohn and Jeroen Ooms and Scott Chamberlain and {Stefan Milton Bache}                                                organization         addressmy-citation-key-for-r R Foundation for Statistical Computing Vienna, Austriarefmanager                                              <NA>            <NA>jqr                                                     <NA>            <NA>                      year                                    urlmy-citation-key-for-r 2020             https://www.R-project.org/refmanager            2017                                   <NA>jqr                   2018 https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=jqr                                                  journal                 doimy-citation-key-for-r                                <NA>                <NA>refmanager            The Journal of Open Source Software 10.21105/joss.00338jqr                                                  <NA>                <NA>                                         notemy-citation-key-for-r                    <NA>refmanager                               <NA>jqr                   R package version 1.1.0
```

A difference in the formats is for instance the way authors are parsed.

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
df$AUTHOR
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
[[1]][1] "R Core Team"[[2]][1] "Mathew William McLean"[[3]][1] "Rich FitzJohn"        "Jeroen Ooms"          "Scott Chamberlain"   [4] "{Stefan Milton Bache"
```

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
df2$author
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
[1] "{R Core Team}"                                                                [2] "Mathew William McLean"                                                        [3] "Rich FitzJohn and Jeroen Ooms and Scott Chamberlain and {Stefan Milton Bache}"
```

`bib2df` even supports separating names, using
[`humaniformat`](https://github.com/ironholds/humaniformat/)

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
bib2df::bib2df("refs.bib", separate_names = TRUE)$AUTHOR
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
[[1]]  salutation first_name middle_name last_name suffix   full_name1       <NA>          R        Core      Team   <NA> R Core Team[[2]]  salutation first_name middle_name last_name suffix             full_name1       <NA>     Mathew     William    McLean   <NA> Mathew William McLean[[3]]  salutation first_name middle_name   last_name suffix            full_name1       <NA>       Rich        <NA>    FitzJohn   <NA>        Rich FitzJohn2       <NA>     Jeroen        <NA>        Ooms   <NA>          Jeroen Ooms3       <NA>      Scott        <NA> Chamberlain   <NA>    Scott Chamberlain4       <NA>    {Stefan      Milton       Bache   <NA> {Stefan Milton Bache
```

bib2df helps doing fun or serious analyses of reference databases.

> Who has coauthored framing research over past two decades? Many,
> isolated teams w/
> [@claesdevreese](https://twitter.com/claesdevreese?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> having highest betweenness.
> [\#polcomm](https://twitter.com/hashtag/polcomm?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> [pic.twitter.com/NzvuHuyqvd](https://t.co/NzvuHuyqvd)
>
> --- mastodon.social/@thosjleeper (@thosjleeper) [July 20,
> 2017](https://twitter.com/thosjleeper/status/887962776806842369?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

### handlr: from BibTeX to RIS, schema.org, etc.

[handlr](https://docs.ropensci.org/handlr/) by [Scott
Chamberlain](/author/scott-chamberlain) is less mature but not less
useful.It's *a tool for converting among citation formats*, inspired by
Ruby [bolognese library](https://github.com/datacite/bolognese).It
defines an R6 class so it has all-in-one objects, but you could also use
[individual functions to read and write different
formats](https://docs.ropensci.org/handlr/reference/index.html).

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
citation <- handlr::HandlrClient$new(x = "refs.bib")citation
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
<handlr>   doi:   ext: bib  format (guessed): bibtex  path: refs.bib  string (abbrev.): none
```

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
citation$write(format = "ris")
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
[1] "TY  - GEN\r\nT1  - R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing\r\nAU  - R Core Team\r\nUR  - https://www.R-project.org/\r\nER  - "                                                                         [2] "TY  - JOUR\r\nT1  - RefManageR: Import and Manage BibTeX and BibLaTeX References in R\r\nAU  - McLeanMathew William\r\nDO  - 10.21105/joss.00338\r\nER  - "                                                            [3] "TY  - GEN\r\nT1  - jqr: Client for 'jq', a 'JSON' Processor\r\nAU  - FitzJohnRich\r\nAU  - OomsJeroen\r\nAU  - ChamberlainScott\r\nAU  - Stefan Milton Bache\r\nUR  - https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=jqr\r\nER  - "
```

At the moment, there are supported readers for CiteProc, RIS, BibTeX,
CodeMeta and supported writers for CiteProc, RIS, BibTeX, schema.org,
RDF/XML, CodeMeta.Quite an arsenal for your bibliography conversion
needs!

## Conclusion

In this tech note we have explained how to use a BibTeX file in a
Markdown file generated from R Markdown without using
pandoc-citeproc.The star of this post was the
[RefManageR](https://docs.ropensci.org/RefManageR/) package, that in
turns depends on the [bibtex](https://github.com/romainfrancois/bibtex)
package and base R functionality to handle bibliographies.You can learn
more about RefManageR functions [on its documentation
website](https://docs.ropensci.org/RefManageR/).We have also mentioned
other R packages offering functionality around BibTeX files:
[citr](https://github.com/crsh/citr) and
[knitcitations](https://github.com/cboettig/knitcitations) for more
easily adding references in standard R Markdown documents,
[bib2df](https://docs.ropensci.org/bib2df/) and
[handlr](https://docs.ropensci.org/handlr/) for converting BibTeX files
to other formats.If you're interested in learning about yet another
workflow involving citations in R Markdown documents, have a look at the
Distill web framework wrapped in the R package distill, where [citations
handling currently happens via
JavaScript](https://github.com/rstudio/distill/issues/45).

::: {.footnotes role="doc-endnotes"}

------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.  ::: {#fn:1}
    McLean MW (2017). "RefManageR: Import and Manage BibTeXand BibLaTeX
    References in R." *The Journal of Open Source Software*.,
    <https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00338>. [↩︎](#fnref:1){.footnote-backref
    role="doc-backlink"}
    :::

2.  ::: {#fn:2}
    R Core Team (2020). *R: A Language andEnvironment for Statistical
    Computing*. R Foundation for StatisticalComputing, Vienna, Austria.
    <https://www.R-project.org/>. [↩︎](#fnref:2){.footnote-backref
    role="doc-backlink"}
    :::

3.  ::: {#fn:3}
    Hello I am the footnote example. [↩︎](#fnref:3){.footnote-backref
    role="doc-backlink"}
    :::

4.  ::: {#fn:4}
    Last year Philipp Ottolinger wrote a nice post ["Being a package
    maintainer or: The social
    contract"](https://www.ottlngr.de/post/being-a-package-maintainer/)
    on his personal website. [↩︎](#fnref:4){.footnote-backref
    role="doc-backlink"}
    :::
:::


Our website is based on Markdown content rendered with Hugo.Markdown content is in some cases knit from R Markdown, but with less functionality than if one rendered R Markdown to html as in the blogdown default.In particular, we cannot use the usual BibTex + CSL + Pandoc-citeproc dance to handle a bibliography.Thankfully, using the rOpenSci package RefManageR, we can still make our own bibliography from a BibTeX file without formatting

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

A Roundup of R Tools for Handling BibTeX