Standardized rticles data format and script to port data into any other template

[mrtoronto]

I can imagine a script which would read data from an "rticles format" file and would output the data formatted with one of the journals formatting templates.

• Is there any use case in the real world that would justify this functionality?
• Is there some problem I'm overlooking that would prevent this from being done?
• Would it be worth building this out?

[dmkaplan2000]

I just wanted to add my 2 cents on this issue. I am not sure a standard rticles format is possible as there are some journals format that provide options (e.g., appendices, highlights, etc.) that simply do not exist in other journal formats, but there is certainly lots of room for standardizing the functionality and YAML keys used by the formats. Things I have noticed that could benefit from standardization include:

• Some YAML headers use thanks for the acknowledgements, others use acknowledgements, still others don't provide an acknowledgements option in the YAML header.
• Some formats by default import the Latex packages for formatting tables with kable (e.g., booktabs), including highlighted code, etc., whereas for others this fails without explicitly including these packages with header-includes. At a minimum, it seems to me that all formats should work if you take the standard Rmarkdown template from Rstudio (i.e., the one you get when you create a basic Rmarkdown document), and change output: pdf_document to output: rticles::springer_article (or whatever format) given the correct cls files and all that.
• Some formats don't work with the standard pandoc citations [@mybibtexkey] or using this type of citations creates a second bibliography if you mix it \citep{} and such.
• Each format has its own way of doing the author address and email fields.
• Not all formats accept the standard pdf_document formatting options found here.

Perhaps instead of creating a script that translates between formats, one could start by creating a script that checks out each format, replaces the given template with a standard template that has the desired "minimum" functionality and then knits it to see if it works and what it produces?