citations-collector 0.2.2

Discover and curate scholarly citations of datasets and software

citations-collector

Discover and curate scholarly citations of datasets and software.

Features

• Citation Discovery: Query CrossRef, OpenCitations, DataCite for citing papers
• Hierarchical Collections: Organize citations by project/version (e.g., DANDI dandisets)
• Git-Friendly: YAML collections + TSV citation records for version control
• Curation Workflow: Mark citations as ignored, merge preprints with published versions
• PDF Acquisition: Automatically download open-access PDFs via Unpaywall with optional git-annex tracking
• Merge Detection: Auto-detect preprints with published versions using CrossRef relationships
• Zotero Integration: Sync citations to hierarchical Zotero collections with automatic merged item relocation
• Incremental Updates: Efficiently discover only new citations since last run

Installation

# Using uv (recommended)
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install citations-collector

# Or using pip
pip install citations-collector

Quick Start

1. Create a Collection

Create collection.yaml:

name: My Research Tools
description: Software tools used in our lab
items:
  - item_id: my-tool
    name: "My Analysis Tool"
    flavors:
      - flavor_id: "1.0.0"
        refs:
          - ref_type: doi
            ref_value: "10.5281/zenodo.1234567"

2. Discover Citations

# Discover citations for all items in collection
citations-collector discover collection.yaml --output citations.tsv

# Use CrossRef polite pool (better rate limits)
citations-collector discover collection.yaml --email [e-mail]

3. View Results

Citations are saved to citations.tsv - a tab-separated file you can open in Excel or edit manually for curation.

Advanced Workflows

PDF Acquisition

Automatically download open-access PDFs using Unpaywall:

# Fetch PDFs for discovered citations
citations-collector fetch-pdfs --config collection.yaml

# Use git-annex for provenance tracking
citations-collector fetch-pdfs --config collection.yaml --git-annex

# Dry run to see what would be downloaded
citations-collector fetch-pdfs --config collection.yaml --dry-run

PDFs are stored at pdfs/{doi}/article.pdf with accompanying article.bib BibTeX files.

Merge Detection

Detect preprints that have published versions:

# Detect merges via CrossRef relationships
citations-collector detect-merges --config collection.yaml

# Also run fuzzy title matching (use with caution)
citations-collector detect-merges --config collection.yaml --fuzzy-match

# Preview without updating
citations-collector detect-merges --config collection.yaml --dry-run

Detected preprints are marked with citation_status=merged and citation_merged_into={published_doi}.

Zotero Sync

Sync citations to Zotero for collaborative browsing:

# Sync to Zotero (requires API key in config or env)
citations-collector sync-zotero --config collection.yaml

# Dry run to preview structure
citations-collector sync-zotero --config collection.yaml --dry-run

Zotero hierarchy:

Top Collection/
  ├── {item_id}/
  │   ├── {flavor}/
  │   │   ├── <active citations>
  │   │   └── Merged/
  │   │       └── <preprints and old versions>

Unified Configuration

Create a unified collection.yaml with all settings:

name: My Research Collection
description: Tools and datasets from our lab

# Source items to track
source:
  items:
    - item_id: dandi-000055
      name: "AJILE12: Long-term naturalistic human intracranial neural recordings"
      flavors:
        - flavor_id: "0.220113.0400"
          refs:
            - ref_type: doi
              ref_value: "10.48324/dandi.000055/0.220113.0400"

# Citation discovery settings
discover:
  sources:
    - crossref
    - opencitations
  email: [e-mail]  # For CrossRef polite pool
  incremental: true

# PDF acquisition settings (optional)
pdfs:
  output_dir: pdfs/
  unpaywall_email: [e-mail]
  git_annex: false

# Zotero sync settings (optional)
zotero:
  library_type: group
  library_id: "12345"
  api_key: "YOUR_API_KEY"  # Or set ZOTERO_API_KEY env var
  top_collection_key: "ABCD1234"

Then run the full workflow:

# 1. Discover citations
citations-collector discover collection.yaml

# 2. Fetch open-access PDFs
citations-collector fetch-pdfs --config collection.yaml

# 3. Detect merged preprints
citations-collector detect-merges --config collection.yaml

# 4. Sync to Zotero
citations-collector sync-zotero --config collection.yaml

Library Usage

from citations_collector import CitationCollector

# Load collection
collector = CitationCollector.from_yaml("collection.yaml")

# Discover citations (incremental by default)
collector.discover_all(incremental=True, email="[e-mail]")

# Save results
collector.save("collection.yaml", "citations.tsv")

Examples

See the examples/ directory for:

• dandi-collection.yaml: DANDI Archive dandisets with versioned DOIs
• repronim-tools.yaml: ReproNim neuroimaging tools with RRIDs
• simple-resources.yaml: Basic collection without versioning
• citations-example.tsv: Example citation records with curation

Development

Setup

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/dandi/citations-collector.git
cd citations-collector

# Setup development environment
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[devel]"

Running Tests

# Run all tests, linting, and type checking
tox

# Run specific environment
tox -e py312      # Tests on Python 3.12
tox -e lint       # Ruff linting
tox -e type       # Mypy type checking
tox -e cov        # Coverage report

Regenerating LinkML Models

When schema/citations.yaml changes:

# Install linkml tools
uv pip install -e ".[linkml]"

# Regenerate Pydantic models
gen-pydantic schema/citations.yaml > src/citations_collector/models/generated.py

# Regenerate JSON Schema
gen-json-schema schema/citations.yaml > schema/citations.schema.json

# Commit generated files
git add src/citations_collector/models/generated.py schema/citations.schema.json
git commit -m "Regenerate LinkML models"

Architecture

• Library-First Design: All functionality accessible programmatically
• LinkML Schema: Validated data models from schema/citations.yaml
• Modular Structure:
  • discovery/: Citation API clients (CrossRef, OpenCitations, DataCite)
  • persistence/: YAML/TSV I/O
  • importers/: DANDI API, Zenodo, GitHub integrations
  • unpaywall.py: Unpaywall API client for OA PDF URLs
  • pdf.py: PDF acquisition with git-annex support
  • merge_detection.py: Preprint/published version detection
  • zotero_sync.py: Zotero hierarchical sync with merged item handling
  • core.py: Main orchestration API
  • cli.py: Click-based CLI (thin wrapper)

Citation Sources

• CrossRef: Most comprehensive, best for DOI citations
• OpenCitations: Open index, may lag behind CrossRef
• DataCite: Good for dataset citations
• Europe PMC: PubMed-indexed papers (future)
• Semantic Scholar: AI-powered citation discovery (future)

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

See CONSTITUTION.md for:

• Code standards (Ruff, mypy, type hints)
• Testing requirements (pytest, 100 lines max, mock HTTP)
• Architecture principles (library-first, reliability, simplicity)

Pull requests welcome!

Citation

If you use citations-collector in your research, please cite:

@software{citations_collector,
  title = {citations-collector: Discover and curate scholarly citations},
  author = {{DANDI Team}},
  url = {https://github.com/dandi/citations-collector},
  license = {MIT}
}