Maintaining author metadata

The list of authors for a technote is maintained in the technote.toml file. This page describes how to add and update author listings.

The connection to authordb.yaml

The author metadata in a technote’s technote.toml file is derived from Rubin Observatory’s author database, authordb.yaml, located in the lsst/lsst-texmf repository. The internal_id field in technote.toml points to the author’s entry in authordb.yaml. This is done so that team members are identified consistently across Rubin Observatory documents and publications.

For example, an author with an ID of sickj is represented in technote.toml as:

technote.toml
[[technote.authors]]
name = {given = "Jonathan", family = "Sick"}
internal_id = "sickj"
orcid = "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3001-676X"
[[technote.authors.affiliations]]
name = "Rubin Observatory Project Office"
internal_id = "RubinObs"
address = "950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA"

The corresponding entry in authordb.yaml is:

authordb.yaml in lsst/lsst-texmf
authors:
  # [...]
  sickj:
    affil:
    - RubinObs
    altaffil: []
    initials: Jonathan
    name: Sick
    orcid: 0000-0003-3001-676X

The highlighted lines, above, show the author ID that connects these metadata sets.

A consequence of this connection is that all technote authors must have an entry in authordb.yaml. You can add and update entries by submitting a pull request to the lsst/lsst-texmf repository.

Adding a new author

Given an author ID from authordb.yaml, you can add that author to the technote’s metadata by running the make add-author command:

make add-author

That command prompts you for the author ID, and then appends the author to the end of the author listing in technote.toml (existing authors are updated in place).

Authors are represented in technote.toml as as individual tables under the technote.authors array of tables. A technote with Sick as the first author and Economou as the second author would look like:

technote.toml
[[technote.authors]]
name = {given = "Jonathan", family = "Sick"}
internal_id = "sickj"
orcid = "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3001-676X"
[[technote.authors.affiliations]]
name = "Rubin Observatory Project Office"
internal_id = "RubinObs"
address = "950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA"

[[technote.authors]]
name = {given = "Frossie", family = "Economou"}
internal_id = "economouf"
orcid = "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8333-7615"
[[technote.authors.affiliations]]
name = "Rubin Observatory Project Office"
internal_id = "RubinObs"
address = "950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA"

To change the order of authors, you can move the [[technote.authors]] tables around in the file. Don’t forget to keep the [[technote.authors.affiliations]] tables with their corresponding authors.

Updating author metadata

Occasionally the author metadata in authordb.yaml will change. To update the author metadata in your technote, run:

make sync-authors