Disambiguate Authors: format is not specified, and not enriched with ORCID

[yarikoptic]

ATM Authors field is just a list of free form strings. That complicates interlinking bids datasets easily across authors/contributors, as expressed e.g. by @lzehl in their pipeline for inclusion of BIDS datasets within openMINDs KG etc. ATM we have in the
https://github.com/bids-standard/bids-specification/blob/HEAD/src/schema/objects/metadata.yaml#L207
we have

Authors:
  name: Authors
  display_name: Authors
  description: |
    List of individuals who contributed to the creation/curation of the dataset.
  type: array
  items:
    type: string

I feel that we better start defining some notion of a Person which would have clear mapping schema.org's Person record. Critically

• separate first (given) from last (family) name

Ideally, provide additional metadata relevant per person

• ORCID
• Affiliation(s), also in a standardized form

If we solve the critical issue, we could then rely on CITATION.cff to be the one which would provide necessary more structured data (ORCID, affiliations), but need to keep in mind some of already identified shortcomings (which might later be worked out in CITATION.cff):

• Authors with multiple affiliations citation-file-format/citation-file-format#268

and unfortunately CITATION.cff not really seeing much of "development" in the past year(s).

[kabilar]

Thanks Yarik. I like the idea of disambiguating the authors list in the dataset_description.json, and using the CITATION.cff for ORCID, affiliations, etc. A couple of additional suggestions are below.

1. If we are using both the Authors key in the dataset_description.json file and the CITATION.cff file, perhaps we will need to change the current docs:

   Requirement level for Authors key in dataset_description.json:

   RECOMMENDED if CITATION.cff is not present

   CITATION.cff

   For most redundant fields between CITATION.cff and dataset_description.json, the CITATION.cff SHOULD take precedence. To avoid inconsistency, metadata present in CITATION.cff SHOULD NOT be be included in dataset_description.json, with the exception of Name and DatasetDOI, to ensure that CITATION.cff-unaware tools can generate references to the dataset. In particular, if CITATION.cff is present, the "Authors" field of dataset_description.json MUST be omitted, and the "HowToAcknowledge", "License" and "ReferencesAndLinks" SHOULD be omitted in favor of the CITATION.cff fields message/preferred-citation, license and references.

2. Perhaps BIDS validators should test for inconsistencies between the authors listed in the dataset_description.json and the CITATION.cff.

[Remi-Gau]

Since bids can already have citation.cff in them to curate authors information in a more structured manner, I am not sure what this issue is meant to bring.

[Remi-Gau]

If anything for bids 2 I would remove authors from the dataset description all together and force it in citation.cff

[kabilar]

If anything for bids 2 I would remove authors from the dataset description all together and force it in citation.cff

Thanks @Remi-Gau. For the BIDS 1.x to BIDS 2.0 migration script, would we then parse the Authors key from the dataset_description.json, generate a CITATION.cff file if it doesn't already exist, and add the authors to the CITATION.cff?

[Remi-Gau]

I had started working on a CLI tool to help with this a long time ago, but I was waiting for the bids validator to validate citation.cff file to get back to it.

https://github.com/Remi-Gau/bids2cite

So I should probably start dusting it up.

[lzehl]

Hi. To put this into context from our side: any clear recommendation from bids on how to write an author string within the specifications would already lower the variability across bids datasets. Of course long-term we would definitely prefer a structured registration of authors through e.g. the cff

[kabilar]

I had started working on a CLI tool to help with this a long time ago, but I was waiting for the bids validator to validate citation.cff file to get back to it.

https://github.com/Remi-Gau/bids2cite

So I should probably start dusting it up.

This is great. Thank you @Remi-Gau.

[kabilar]

Hi. To put this into context from our side: any clear recommendation from bids on how to write an author string within the specifications would already lower the variability across bids datasets. Of course long-term we would definitely prefer a structured registration of authors through e.g. the cff

Thank you @lzehl. I definitely agree.

[yarikoptic]

by any, do you think Last, First would be sufficient @lzehl ?

[lzehl]

Yes. That would harmonize already a bit.