Link to list of papers by author broken if author has middle initial

[cicirello]

What?

On the page of a published paper, on the right in the list of authors, each author name is a link to a page with a list of papers they authored in JOSS. The text of the link displays their full name as it appeared in the paper (which certainly makes sense), including a middle initial if they used one when publishing the paper. The link itself likewise includes the middle initial if one is present. However, such links are broken because the actual page listing that author's papers in JOSS only includes first and last name but not middle initial.

Example Case 1 (JOSS)

Here is a first example to recreate the issue:

• Consider the paper https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.02448
• Consider the screenshot of the right with the author list that I've attached.
• My full-name appears in that list the way it appears within the paper itself.
• It is linked to: https://joss.theoj.org/papers/by/Vincent%20A.%20Cicirello
• The above link is a dead link.
• However, the actual page of JOSS articles I've authored is: https://joss.theoj.org/papers/by/Vincent%20Cicirello

Desired behavior and possible fixes: I'm not sure which of the following is preferred, so here are three possibilities:

• Option 1: Leave an author's page of JOSS articles with a URL that only includes first and last names, and correct the link to it from the authors list of an article so that the text still appears with name as listed in paper, but where the link uses the correct URL with first and last only. The downside of this is that it is possible for two or more authors with common first and last names to be mixed together on a single page.
• Option 2: Define the URL to an author's list of JOSS articles using their fullname as listed in JOSS articles (with middle initials, etc if used).
• Option 3: Don't use the author's name in the URL for the list of papers they authored. Instead, use the author's ORCID. JOSS requires it anyway, so all authors should have it, and it is unique so it even deals with the potential of two different authors with same name.

Example Case 2 (JOSE)

The same issue exists with JOSE. To recreate issue in JOSE, consider the following:

• Consider the paper: https://jose.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/jose.00140
• The link in the list of authors on the right side for me is: https://jose.theoj.org/papers/by/Vincent%20A.%20Cicirello
• That link text is fine since I use my middle initial when publishing, but the link itself is dead.
• The link that works is https://jose.theoj.org/papers/by/Vincent%20Cicirello

Desired behavior and possible fixes are same as previous case, but for JOSE.

[arfon]

Thanks for flagging this. Definitely a bug!

[xuanxu]

Weird, the link I see in https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.02448 is: https://joss.theoj.org/papers/by/Vincent%20A%2E%20Cicirello and it works using Firefox or Safari, but not in Chrome. It looks like some browsers escape the . character and some don't. Maybe we can enforce escaping the author's name so the link including the middle initial will always work. On it.

[cicirello]

With the dot or with the dot escaped, I see the same behavior on Chrome and Firefox as previously reported. However, with middle initial but without the dot seems to work fine on both Chrome and Firefox. So it looks like the author paper list pages are available including any middle initials in name but without any period that might be after the initial. While the link from a paper to the author page currently includes a period.