bibxml7: organizations as "authors" when authors are already listed

[ajeanmahoney]

Describe the issue

bibxml7 entries list the organization as a separate "author" even when there are authors listed. For example:

      <author fullname="J. Jones" surname="Jones">
        <organization>Acme Corp.</organization>
      </author>
      <author fullname="J. Smith" surname="Smith"/>
      <author>
        <organization>NIST</organization>
      </author>

However, if a document has one or more authors, the organization should not be listed as a separate author in the reference entry. That is, the author info should look like this (organization information for the authors themselves is optional):

      <author fullname="J. Jones" surname="Jones">
        <organization>Acme Corp.</organization>
      </author>
      <author fullname="J. Smith" surname="Smith"/>

If the document does not list authors or editors, then organization information can be used:

      <author>
        <organization>NIST</organization>
      </author>

Some more info can be found in the Style Guide: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7322#section-4.8.6.6

See the following for bibxml7 examples where both authors and organizations are listed:
https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml7/reference.DOI.10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4.xml
https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml7/reference.DOI.10.1145/2208917.2209336.xml
https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml7/reference.DOI.10.1145/99517.99553.xml
https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml7/reference.DOI.10.1145/242896.242897.xml
https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml7/reference.DOI.10.1109/PV.2013.6691439.xml
https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml7/reference.DOI.10.1109/INFCOMW.2014.6849240.xml
https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml7/reference.DOI.10.1007/3-540-60865-6_43.xml

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[ronaldtse]

@ajeanmahoney is this only about bibxml7 (DOI conversion), or across all bibliographic data sets?

One small issue: the citation of "NIST.FIPS.180-4" should really be using the proper NIST bibliographic item instead of the DOI:

• https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml-nist/reference.NIST.FIPS.180-4.xml

It does have the same issue though.

<author fullname="Quynh H. Dang" surname="Dang">
  <organization>Information Technology Laboratory</organization>
</author>
<author>
  <organization abbrev="NIST">National Institute of Standards and Technology</organization>
  <address>
    <postal>
      <country>US</country>
      <city>Gaithersburg</city>
    </postal>
  </address>
</author>

Some more info can be found in the Style Guide: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7322#section-4.8.6.6

I wonder if this is a presentation vs semantic issue -- technically, this functionality of selecting individual vs organizational authors according to the criteria can be implemented in xml2rfc instead of in bibxml-service.

[ajeanmahoney]

is this only about bibxml7 (DOI conversion), or across all bibliographic data sets?

I found this issue in bibxml7; however, it could be an issue in other datasets.

I recently learned of one reference entry where the editor and the organization are listed on purpose (https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.4844.xml). I'll be checking with the RPC team about whether we would ever construct a reference like that in the future.

the citation of "NIST.FIPS.180-4" should really be using the proper NIST bibliographic item instead of the DOI

I see that the page for this document (https://bib.ietf.org/get-one/by-docid/?docid=NIST+FIPS+180-4&doctype=NIST&query=FIPS%20180-4&query_format=docid_regex&page=1) lists both the bibxml-nist and bibxml7 entries. Should it only list the bibxml-nist entry? They also have slightly different information:
https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml-nist/reference.NIST.FIPS.180-4.xml
https://bib.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml7/reference.DOI.10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4.xml

For this particular reference, where does the author information come from? The author name cannot be found in the document itself. Is this metadata that NIST provides?

technically, this functionality of selecting individual vs organizational authors according to the criteria can be implemented in xml2rfc instead of in bibxml-service

I'm thinking about this suggestion.

[ronaldtse]

For this particular reference, where does the author information come from? The author name cannot be found in the document itself. Is this metadata that NIST provides?

The bibxml-nist dataset provides authoritative metadata directly from NIST (source: https://github.com/usnistgov/NIST-Tech-Pubs).

References from bibxml7 contain DOI metadata obtained from CrossRef.

If there are issues with NIST metadata, please file them at https://github.com/usnistgov/NIST-Tech-Pubs which is run by the NIST Information Service Office.

[ronaldtse]

I see that the page for this document (https://bib.ietf.org/get-one/by-docid/?docid=NIST+FIPS+180-4&doctype=NIST&query=FIPS%20180-4&query_format=docid_regex&page=1) lists both the bibxml-nist and bibxml7 entries. Should it only list the bibxml-nist entry? They also have slightly different information:

This is something we should consider -- whether to go with "full disclosure" for the user, or go with "minimal necessary" to not confuse the author with unnecessary (too many) choices.