Central referencable literature database

[akorgor]

It can be challenging to maintain consistency when referencing literature across multiple sections of the NEST documentation. For example, in an ongoing project, we frequently reference two specific papers across different sections. One of these papers is still a work in progress, with its title and author order changing. Managing these references manually increases the likelihood of formatting errors and inconsistencies.

I propose adding a central bibliography file to the NEST documentation. This file would contain all relevant literature, and references to these works could be made across the documentation by linking to this file. The formatted references would be rendered in the respective location, ensuring that the documentation from the user's perspective remains the same, with a short literature list in each relevant section (see for example Sphinx documentation on bibliography. This approach would:

• Ensure consistent formatting of references throughout the documentation
• Minimize the chances of errors
• Simplify the process of maintaining and updating references
• Eliminate the need for manual copying of reference data in multiple places

An alternative would be to continue manually copying and pasting references into each section of the documentation. However, this approach is more error-prone and time-consuming, especially when frequently updating or referencing papers with changing information.

[github-actions[bot]]

Issue automatically marked stale!