Title: Parse and Deduplicate Author Names
Version: 0.2.0
Description: Utilities to parse authors fields from DESCRIPTION files and general purpose functions to deduplicate names in database, beyond the specific case of R package authors.
License: MIT + file LICENSE
URL: https://github.com/Bisaloo/authoritative, https://hugogruson.fr/authoritative/
BugReports: https://github.com/Bisaloo/authoritative/issues
Depends: R (≥ 4.1.0)
Imports: stringi, utils
Suggests: knitr, rmarkdown, spelling, testthat (≥ 3.0.0)
VignetteBuilder: knitr
Config/Needs/website: epiverse-trace/epiversetheme, tidyverse, igraph, netUtils
Config/testthat/edition: 3
Config/testthat/parallel: true
Encoding: UTF-8
Language: en-GB
LazyData: true
RoxygenNote: 7.3.2
Config/Needs/build: moodymudskipper/devtag
NeedsCompilation: no
Packaged: 2025-06-23 16:56:27 UTC; hugo
Author: Hugo Gruson ORCID iD [aut, cre, cph], Chris Hartgerink ORCID iD [rev], data.org [fnd] (until version 0.2.0 included)
Maintainer: Hugo Gruson <hugo.gruson+R@normalesup.org>
Repository: CRAN
Date/Publication: 2025-06-24 07:50:11 UTC

authoritative: Parse and Deduplicate Author Names

Description

Utilities to parse authors fields from DESCRIPTION files and general purpose functions to deduplicate names in database, beyond the specific case of R package authors.

Author(s)

Maintainer: Hugo Gruson hugo.gruson+R@normalesup.org (ORCID) [copyright holder]

Other contributors:

See Also

Useful links:

A data.frame of historical metadata from CRAN packages epidemiology.

Description

A data.frame of historical metadata from CRAN packages epidemiology.

Usage

cran_epidemiology_packages

Format

A data.frame with 5 variables:

Package

package name

Version

package version

Authors@R

authors as listed in the Authors@R field from the DESCRIPTION file

Author

authors as listed in the Author field from the DESCRIPTION file

Maintainer

package maintainer

Expand names from abbreviated forms or initials

Description

Expand names from abbreviated forms or initials

Usage

expand_names(short, expanded)

Arguments

short

A character vector of potentially abbreviated names

expanded

A character vector of potentially expanded names

Details

When you have a list xof abbreviated and non-abbreviated names and you want to deduplicate them, this function can be used as expand_names(x, x), which will return the most expanded version available in x for each name

Value

A character vector with the same length as short

Examples

expand_names(
  c("W A Mozart", "Wolfgang Mozart", "Wolfgang A Mozart"),
  "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart"
)

# Real-case application example
# Deduplicate names in list, as described in "details"
epi_pkg_authors <- cran_epidemiology_packages |>
  subset(!is.na(`Authors@R`), `Authors@R`, drop = TRUE) |>
  parse_authors_r() |>
  # Drop email, role, ORCID and format as string rather than person object
  lapply(function(x) format(x, include = c("given", "family"))) |>
  unlist()

# With all duplicates
length(unique(epi_pkg_authors))

# Deduplicate
epi_pkg_authors_normalized <- expand_names(epi_pkg_authors, epi_pkg_authors)

length(unique(epi_pkg_authors_normalized))

Invert 'LastName FirstName' to 'FirstName LastName' (or the reverse)

Description

Invert 'LastName FirstName' to 'FirstName LastName' (or the reverse)

Usage

invert_names(names, correct_names)

Arguments

names

A character vector of potentially inverted names

correct_names

A character vector of correct names

Details

When you have a list x of mixed 'First Last' and 'Last First' names, but no source of truth and you want to deduplicate them, this function can be used as expand_names(x, x), which will return the most common version available in x for each name.

Value

A character vector with the same length as names

Examples

invert_names(
  c("Wolfgang Mozart", "Mozart Wolfgang"),
  "Wolfgang Mozart"
)

# Real-case application example
# Deduplicate names in list, as described in "details"
epi_pkg_authors <- cran_epidemiology_packages |>
  subset(!is.na(`Authors@R`), `Authors@R`, drop = TRUE) |>
  parse_authors_r() |>
  # Drop email, role, ORCID and format as string rather than person object
  lapply(function(x) format(x, include = c("given", "family"))) |>
  unlist()

# With all duplicates
length(unique(epi_pkg_authors))

# Deduplicate
epi_pkg_authors_normalized <- invert_names(epi_pkg_authors, epi_pkg_authors)

length(unique(epi_pkg_authors_normalized))

Parse the Author field from a DESCRIPTION file

Description

Parse the Author field from a DESCRIPTION file into a person object

Usage

parse_authors(author_string)

Arguments

author_string

A character containing the Author or Maintainer field from a DESCRIPTION file

Value

A character vector, or a list of character vectors of length equals to the length of author_string

Examples

# Read from a DESCRIPTION file directly
utils_description <- system.file("DESCRIPTION", package = "utils")
utils_authors <- read.dcf(utils_description, "Author")

parse_authors(utils_authors)

# Read from a database of CRAN metadata
cran_epidemiology_packages$Author |>
  parse_authors() |>
  unlist() |>
  unique() |>
  sort()

Parse the Authors@R field from a DESCRIPTION file

Description

Parse the Authors@R field from a DESCRIPTION file into a person object

Usage

parse_authors_r(authors_r_string)

Arguments

authors_r_string

A character containing the Authors@R field from a DESCRIPTION file

Value

A person object, or a list of person objects of length equals to the length of authors_r_string

Examples

# Read from a DESCRIPTION file directly
pkg_description <- system.file("DESCRIPTION", package = "authoritative")
authors_r_pkg <- read.dcf(pkg_description, "Authors@R")

parse_authors_r(authors_r_pkg)

# Read from a database of CRAN metadata
cran_epidemiology_packages |>
  subset(!is.na(`Authors@R`), `Authors@R`, drop = TRUE) |>
  parse_authors_r() |>
  head()