AuthorshipExtractor

A multi-dimensional scientific authorship framework, both a paper describing the approach and a live, interactive demonstration of it. Built with MyST.

What is this?

The traditional author list compresses complex, multi-dimensional contributions into a single ordered sequence of names. AuthorshipExtractor reimagines this by letting readers explore contributions along multiple axes simultaneously:

• CRediT roles — 14 standardized contributor roles with effort levels (lead / equal / supporting)
• Section & figure attribution — who contributed to the work described in each section and figure
• Dynamic sorting — re-order authors by name, CRediT role, number of roles, join date, or institution
• Collaboration network — force-directed layout where proximity reflects collaboration strength, with per-role edge visualization and ego-centric views on click
• Timeline — when each contributor joined the project
• Rich profiles — ORCID, affiliations, CRediT roles, and optional profile photos
• Dataset switcher — optionally configure multiple author lists (e.g. different teams or project phases) and switch between them

The site renders a real academic paper about this framework while simultaneously demonstrating it via an interactive anywidget plugin.

Live demo

Deployed via GitHub Pages: https://AllenNeuralDynamics.github.io/AuthorshipExtractor/

Use the plugin in another MyST project

Downstream projects can load the standalone plugin directly from the latest GitHub release. No plugin fork, copied JavaScript, CSS, or npm dependency is required.

# myst.yml
project:
	plugins:
		- https://github.com/AllenNeuralDynamics/AuthorshipExtractor/releases/latest/download/authorship-plugin.mjs

Add the directive to a MyST Markdown document and keep the project-specific author data in that repository:

:::{authorship-explorer}
:authors: ./authors.yml
:height: 800px
:::

The authors path is relative to the Markdown document. The alternate dataset options authors-alt, alt-label, authors-alt2, and alt2-label are also available, as shown in article.md. For reproducible builds, replace latest with a release tag, for example:

- https://github.com/AllenNeuralDynamics/AuthorshipExtractor/releases/download/v0.1.3/authorship-plugin.mjs

MyST downloads and executes the remote plugin during the build, so builds using the URL require network access.

The release bundle and its emitted browser assets carry the full MIT notice, so consuming repositories do not need a separate third-party notice file solely for AuthorshipExtractor.

Quick start

# Install MyST CLI (requires Node.js 18+)
npm install -g mystmd

# Start dev server
myst start

# Production build
myst build

Publishing a plugin release

Maintainers: see CONTRIBUTING.md for the release procedure.

Project structure

article.md                # Full paper in MyST Markdown
myst.yml                  # MyST project configuration
authors.yml               # Simulated contributor data (7 fictional authors)
authors-large.yml          # Simulated large team (50 fictional authors)
authors-real.yml           # Real contributor data
authorship-plugin.mjs      # MyST plugin: directive + transform
authorship-widget.mjs      # Interactive widget (vanilla JS, anywidget)
authorship-widget.css      # Widget styles
scripts/                   # Build and standalone-bundle tests
references.bib             # Bibliography
gen_figure.py              # Script to regenerate the author-count figure
author-count-growth.yaml   # Source data for the figure
author-count-growth.png    # Pre-rendered figure
CONTRIBUTING.md            # How to add yourself as a contributor

Adding yourself as a contributor

You can become a real contributor by adding your profile to authors-real.yml and opening a pull request. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide.

Tech stack

• MyST — Markedly Structured Text for scientific publishing
• anywidget — Interactive widget framework
• Vanilla JavaScript (no React/bundler required)
• YAML-based contributor data

License

MIT