Python Tools for Management Research

3a: Quarto Documents, Citations, and References

Jason T. Kiley

From project recipe to research output

Quarto gives us a consistent interface to a set of powerful tools that can automate tedious and error-prone manual processes.

We will continue to build in our practice repository using Quarto.

Quarto documents

What Quarto does

Quarto gives us one reasonably consistent authoring interface for:

• Markdown prose;
• executable code chunks;
• document metadata;
• citations and references;
• output formats such as HTML, PDF, Word, and slides.

Where it comes from

Quarto grows out of the same reproducible-document tradition that made R Markdown and R Notebooks popular.

The big expansion is that Quarto is not just an RStudio/R workflow. It is a standalone publishing system built around Markdown, executable code, and Pandoc, with first-class support for Python, R, Julia, and JavaScript.

A .qmd file

---
title: "An Example Manuscript"
author: "Your Name"
format:
  html:
    toc: true
  typst:
    toc: true
---

## Introduction

This is a cited sentence [@kiley_2023].

One interface, many outputs

The repository can hold the whole story

python_tmr_practice/
  .devcontainer/
  pyproject.toml
  _quarto.yml
  index.qmd
  paper.qmd
  references.bib

The source files are the things we edit and commit.

Easy things easy. Hard things possible.

The same basic workflow can make a simple HTML page, a PDF, a Word document, a website, or slides. We do not have to learn a totally separate toolchain for every output.

Quarto sits on top of powerful tools such as Pandoc, Typst, and revealjs.

We can almost always stay in the friendly layer. But, if we have highly-specific needs, we can customize the underlying tools directly, and Quarto has some features to make that easier.

What we commit

Commit:

• .qmd source files;
• _quarto.yml;
• references.bib;
• project and environment files.

Usually do not commit:

• _site/;
• generated PDFs or HTML files unless there is a specific sharing reason.

Citations and references

BibTeX files

A .bib file stores reference metadata in plain text.

@article{kiley_2023,
  author = {Kiley, Jason and McKenny, Aaron and Short, Jeremy and Smith, Anne},
  title = {Call for Papers for a Feature Topic: Having A Way with Words},
  journal = {Organizational Research Methods},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.1177/10944281231195704}
}

Cite keys

The label after the opening brace is the cite key.

Text analysis methods keep evolving in organizational research [@kiley_2023].

Quarto uses the cite key to find the reference and build the reference list.

CSL files

CSL files control how citations and references are formatted.

bibliography: references.bib
csl: https://www.zotero.org/styles/academy-of-management-review

The same source references can be rendered in different journal styles, just by changing the CSL link. (But, don’t forget to rework to another journal’s norms.)

Getting BibTeX

Common routes:

• use the publisher’s website citation tool and choose BibTeX;
• uncheck direct import when that gives a clean browser page;
• use DOI metadata from the terminal when it is convenient.

curl -L -H "Accept: text/x-bibliography; style=bibtex" \
  "https://doi.org/10.1177/10944281231195704"

PDF output

Typst, not LaTeX

For PDF output, we will use Quarto’s Typst format.

Typst is fast, modern, and much friendlier to customize later than a traditional LaTeX workflow.

Multiple formats from one source

format:
  html:
    toc: true
  typst:
    toc: true
  docx: default

One source document can produce HTML, PDF, and Word.

Hands-on

Open the 3a activity page.