DOI Rendered as Hyperlink in Bibliography Despite CSL Customization

TomBener commented 3 days ago

Description

When using Pandoc with a custom CSL file to generate bibliographies, the DOI is rendered as a hyperlink for the title of an entry, even if the CSL file does not include a macro or instructions to do so. This behavior is inconsistent with tools like the Zotero Word plugin, which correctly follows the CSL specification.

Steps to Reproduce

Use the following Markdown file as input:

---
title: Test CSL without DOI
csl: chicago-author-date-without-doi.csl
reference-section-title: References
references:
- author:
- family: Acemoglu
 given: Daron
- family: De Feo
 given: Giuseppe
- family: De Luca
 given: Giacomo
- family: Russo
 given: Gianluca
container-title: The Quarterly Journal of Economics
doi: 10.1093/qje/qjac001
id: acemoglu2022
issue: 2
issued: 2022-05-01
page: 1233-1296
title: "War, socialism, and the rise of fascism: An empirical exploration"
title-short: War, socialism, and the rise of fascism
type: article-journal
volume: 137
---

# Test Citation

@acemoglu2022

Use this CSL file, which omits any DOI macro.
Run the following Pandoc command:

pandoc test.md -t html -C

Inspect the output.

Expected Behavior

The bibliography should render without the title being hyperlinked to the DOI unless explicitly specified in the CSL file.

Actual Behavior

The title in the bibliography is hyperlinked to the DOI, despite the CSL file having no such macro or instructions:

<h1 id="test-citation">Test citation</h1>
<p><span class="citation" data-cites="acemoglu2022">Acemoglu et al.
(2022)</span></p>
<h1 id="test-citation-1">Test citation</h1>
<p><span class="citation" data-cites="acemoglu2022">Acemoglu et al.
(2022)</span></p>
<h1 class="unnumbered" id="bibliography">References</h1>
<div id="refs" class="references csl-bib-body hanging-indent"
data-entry-spacing="0" role="list">
<div id="ref-acemoglu2022" class="csl-entry" role="listitem">
Acemoglu, Daron, Giuseppe De Feo, Giacomo De Luca, and Gianluca Russo.
2022. <span>“<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjac001">War,
Socialism, and the Rise of Fascism: An Empirical
Exploration</a>.”</span> <em>The Quarterly Journal of Economics</em> 137
(2): 1233–96.
</div>
</div>

Notes

This behavior is not observed in the Zotero Word plugin when using the same CSL file. It seems Pandoc may be applying default handling for DOIs that overrides or bypasses the CSL configuration. The Pandoc version is 3.5.

jgm commented 3 days ago

I believe we are following the spec here: https://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/specification.html#appendix-vi-links

There is no specific configuration in CSL for hyperlinks, as far as I know.

TomBener commented 2 days ago

I believe we are following the spec here: https://docs.citationstyles.org/en/stable/specification.html#appendix-vi-links

There is no specific configuration in CSL for hyperlinks, as far as I know.

Thanks. I understand it, but is there any method to disable the hyperlinks of DOI as some journal styles don’t need it.

jgm commented 2 days ago

You could use a Lua filter (put it after --citeproc on the command line so that it operates after citeproc). The filter would look inside the refs Div and delinkify any links there. See the docs for Lua filters.

jgm / pandoc