[Feature Request] `series` and `subtitle` Fields for all Entries

[kevinmatthes]

I would like to add a book as a reference to a CITATION.cff. The problem is that there is no way of entering the subtitle of publications appropriately according to schema version 1.2.0. As a workaround, I usually specify the subtitle of works as their abstracts -- for both the references as well as for the described projects themselves. In case of the book I would like to cite, this is no problem since it has no dedicated abstract. This solution also passes the CFF validation GitHub Action without any complaints.

The problem becomes more crucial if there should be a set of papers (type: article) with all the same titles and authors only differing in their abstracts and subtitles and which do not originate from a conference. A solution would be to add either a field for subtitles or at least the series. For the example of the set of articles, one could then turn the actual title into the series and assign the articles' subtitles to the title fields -- even though this procedure would not be accurate.

I would like to request to add at least one of the suggested fields to the next schema version. A benefit of doing so would be an enhancement of the BibTeX compatibility.

[fingolfin]

I really would like to have at least series. Is there a guide somewhere what to take care of when extending the format? At the very least I assume one has to edit/update:

• schema.json
• schema-guide.md
• presumably add a test (where/how?)
• ... anything else?

[kevinmatthes]

Thank you for your reply to this issue, @fingolfin, and sorry for the delayed answers to your questions.

• I agree with you that schema.json is the most important file to edit.
• When editing schema-guide.json, please also pay attention to its dedicated Python 3 unit test: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/blob/main/tests/validate_schema_guide.py.
• There is documentation on how to add tests for new schema features which might be a good starting point: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/blob/main/examples/README.md.
• I assume these three steps should suffice. However, this project has a very good CI, so in case that something should be missing, I am sure that this would be caught.