Automated updating of citation information

[sr-murthy]

We now have citation information available in the README and the Sphinx docs. But this information, including the authors, is written by hand from the citation file.

This could potentially be automated with a few libraries:

• cffconvert library - this can validate and export citations to other formats from the citation file via a CLI, but exports to citation styles are currently limited to an APA variant - other styles such as AMA are not directly supported. Below is an example of a citation style export in the APA variant, from the ARC repository root:

$ cffconvert -f apalike
Garcia-Gallo E., Duque-Vallejo S., Darji D., Liggins P., Murthy S., Edinburgh T., Lunn M., Kelly S., Bourner J., Chang A., Chernyavskaya A., Carson G., Cummings M., Davtian L., de Oliveira V.S.B., Diaz J., Dunning J., Hashmi M., Hassan Z., Ho A., Horby P., Jackson C., Judd A., Kiseleva A., Le Prevost M., Lim W.S., Mello C., Murthy S., Olliaro P., Reyes L.F., Rojek A., Rylance J., Sauer L., Semple C., Sconza R., Sharin L., Siddiqui A., Uyeki T., Watson H., Wu J., Pesonel E., Munblit D., Demidova A., Merson L. (2026). ARC (version 1.5.0). DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14113727 URL: https://github.com/ISARICResearch/ARC

• citationlib - this appears to support exports to more citation styles, but is purely a library and doesn't provide a CLI.

A combination of validation with cffconvert and style export with citationlib might work. This could be implemented in a custom GitHub Action workflow.

For all this to work, the CITATION.cff file must be updated as contributors / authors change, and should be checked that it is up to date as part of each release.

P. S. The same approach can be used in BRIDGE, VERTEX, ISARICAnalytics, and elsewhere (if required).