[R-pkg-devel] [Rd] Making a package CITATION file from BibTeX

On Thu, 30 May 2019, Dr Gregory Jefferis wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to provide a CITATION file for my package nat.nblast 
[1].

I have the correct citation in BibTeX format [2]. How can I convert 
this BibTeX to the format needed by R for a package CITATION file (I 
have a lot of other packages needing citations ...).

(1) You can use read.bib() from the "bibtex" package to read the .bib 
file containing the relevant reference.

(2) This gives you a "bibentry" object that can be turned into the R 
code generating it with format(..., style = "R") from the basic 
"utils" package.

(3) Then you can writeLines() this R code on the console or 
writeLines(..., "CITATION") to a CITATION file.

(4) Optionally you can also include a $header in your bibentry with a 
short introductory sentence. Or if you have multiple references to go 
into the same CITATION you might want to include a $header for each 
and an $mheader for everything.

A worked example is included below. Background information is given 
in: https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2012-009

Let's assume that your BibTeX entry [2] is the first entry in a file 
called "my.bib". Then you can do:

## read first item from BibTeX as "bibentry" object
b <- bibtex::read.bib("my.bib")[[1]]

## delete the bib key and add a header for the citation
b$key <- NULL
b$header <- "To cite nat.nblast in publications use:"

## turn the "bibentry" into the R code generating it
b <- format(b, style = "R")

## write the R code to the console
writeLines(b)

bibentry(bibtype = "Article",
         header = "To cite nat.nblast in publications use:",
         author = c(person(given = "Marta",
                           family = "Costa"),
                    person(given = c("James", "D"),
                           family = "Manton"),
                    person(given = c("Aaron", "D"),
                           family = "Ostrovsky"),
                    person(given = "Steffen",
                           family = "Prohaska"),
                    person(given = c("Gregory", "S", "X", "E"),
                           family = "Jefferis")),
         doi = "10.1016/j.neuron.2016.06.012",
         journal = "Neuron",
         month = "Jul",
         number = "2",
         pages = "293-311",
         title = "NBLAST: Rapid, Sensitive Comparison of Neuronal 
Structure and Construction of Neuron Family Databases",
         volume = "91",
         year = "2016")

I think what I need is the opposite of RefManageR::toBiblatex [3]. 
This seems like it should be a common need, so I feel sure I must be 
missing something, but I can't seem to google up any hints.

With many thanks,

Greg Jefferis.

[1] http://github.com/jefferislab/nat.nblast 
https://cran.r-project.org/package=nat.nblast
[2]

@article{Costa:2016aa,
	Author = {Costa, Marta and Manton, James D and Ostrovsky, Aaron D 
and Prohaska, Steffen and Jefferis, Gregory S X E},
	Doi = {10.1016/j.neuron.2016.06.012},
	Journal = {Neuron},
	Month = {Jul},
	Number = {2},
	Pages = {293-311},
	Title = {NBLAST: Rapid, Sensitive Comparison of Neuronal Structure 
and Construction of Neuron Family Databases},
	Volume = {91},
	Year = {2016}}

[3] https://rdrr.io/github/ropensci/RefManageR/man/toBiblatex.html


--
Gregory Jefferis
Division of Neurobiology
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Francis Crick Avenue
Cambridge Biomedical Campus
Cambridge, CB2 OQH, UK

http://www2.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/group-leaders/h-to-m/g-jefferis
http://jefferislab.org
http://www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/departments/connectomics