Consider using citeproc for formatting references

[rdmpage]

GBIF doesn't have a consistent format for displaying references, and often the most useful bits (DOIs, URLs) are not clickable. Obviously GBIF is somewhat at the mercy of its data providers, who often supply messy bibliographic data. However, if you compare GBIF with, say, Wikipedia, the later often has much nicer looking bibliographic data.

One approach would be for GBIF to adopt CiteProc. If each reference was encoded in Citeproc JSON, then there are both server- and client-side tools that can render the reference in a range of formats, and for a range of locales (for when/if the GBIF portal is localised in different languages).

I realise that bibliographic data is a particular obsession of mine, but I think in the longer term:

• people will want to see evidence for the data GBIF shows (here is the paper saying this lizard occurs in this locality)
• we can engage researchers by citing their work (oh, I like GBIF because those dots on the map come from my paper)
• using citeproc means GBIF doesn't have to think about how to format references, it can leave that to citeproc

Support and examples

CiteProc is supported by CrossRef, in that for a DOI you can get a reference in CiteProc, e.g. http://search.crossref.org/?q=10.15560%2F6.4.503 has an option to get the reference formatted in various styles supported by CiteProc, e.g.:

Jansen, M., & Köhler, G. (2016). Reptilia, Squamata, Amphisbaenidae, Amphisbaena cegei Montero, 1997, and Reptilia, Squamata, Teiidae, Tupinambis rufescens (Günther, 1871): Vertical range extension. Check List, 6(4), 503. doi:10.15560/6.4.503

or in Citeproc JSON itself https://api.crossref.org/v1/works/http://dx.doi.org/10.15560/6.4.503 :

{
    "status": "ok",
    "message-type": "work",
    "message-version": "1.0.0",
    "message": {
        "indexed": {
            "date-parts": [
                [2016, 12, 20]
            ],
            "date-time": "2016-12-20T03:20:49Z",
            "timestamp": 1482204049361
        },
        "reference-count": 0,
        "publisher": "Check List Journal",
        "issue": "4",
        "license": [{
            "URL": "http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0",
            "start": {
                "date-parts": [
                    [2016, 11, 27]
                ],
                "date-time": "2016-11-27T00:00:00Z",
                "timestamp": 1480204800000
            },
            "delay-in-days": 0,
            "content-version": "vor"
        }],
        "content-domain": {
            "domain": [],
            "crossmark-restriction": false
        },
        "short-container-title": ["cl"],
        "cited-count": 0,
        "abstract": "<jats:p>We report on records of Amphisbaena cegei and Tupinambis rufescens in the Bolivian Inter-Andean Dry Forest (Bolivia) that extend the known vertical distribution.<\/jats:p>",
        "DOI": "10.15560\/6.4.503",
        "type": "journal-article",
        "created": {
            "date-parts": [
                [2016, 11, 27]
            ],
            "date-time": "2016-11-27T00:56:10Z",
            "timestamp": 1480208170000
        },
        "page": "503",
        "source": "CrossRef",
        "title": ["Reptilia, Squamata, Amphisbaenidae, Amphisbaena cegei Montero, 1997, and Reptilia, Squamata, Teiidae, Tupinambis rufescens (G\u00fcnther, 1871): Vertical range extension"],
        "prefix": "http:\/\/id.crossref.org\/prefix\/10.15560",
        "volume": "6",
        "author": [{
            "given": "Martin",
            "family": "Jansen",
            "affiliation": []
        }, {
            "given": "Gunther",
            "family": "K\u00f6hler",
            "affiliation": []
        }],
        "member": "http:\/\/id.crossref.org\/member\/6182",
        "published-online": {
            "date-parts": [
                [2016, 11, 27]
            ]
        },
        "container-title": ["Check List"],
        "original-title": [],
        "link": [{
            "URL": "http:\/\/www.biotaxa.org\/cl\/article\/viewFile\/26952\/24868",
            "content-type": "application\/pdf",
            "content-version": "vor",
            "intended-application": "text-mining"
        }],
        "deposited": {
            "date-parts": [
                [2016, 12, 19]
            ],
            "date-time": "2016-12-19T16:32:16Z",
            "timestamp": 1482165136000
        },
        "score": 1.0,
        "subtitle": [],
        "short-title": [],
        "issued": {
            "date-parts": [
                [2016, 11, 27]
            ]
        },
        "URL": "http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.15560\/6.4.503",
        "ISSN": ["1809-127X"],
        "citing-count": 0
    }
}

[kbraak]

@rdmpage @dschigel @MortenHofft

Just to provide another comparison with PANGAEA's dataset page, which provides the following citation formats: RIS, BIBTEX and Text. It also makes a strong directive to users to always cite when using the data. Here is an example dataset: https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.704574

[dschigel]

Here should be a link to the issue where I recommended the bibliographic export formats to @MortenHofft @cgendreau

[rdmpage]

@dschigel @MortenHofft @kbraak Formatted citations of DOIs, whether for papers or datasets are already available as a service, see http://citation.crosscite.org and especially http://citation.crosscite.org/docs.html So, if you want pretty much any format for a DOI this is trivial. For example:

curl -LH "Accept: application/x-bibtex" https://doi.org/10.15468/inygc6

returns

@misc{https://doi.org/10.15468/inygc6,
  doi = {10.15468/inygc6},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.15468/inygc6},
  author = {rdmpage},
  publisher = {Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow},
  title = {International Barcode of Life project (iBOL)},
  year = {2016}
}