Create short scientific abstract

[cbrnr]

I would like to create a short scientific abstract (e.g. for submitting to a conference) with Quarto. I saw that there are journal templates, but this seems like too much for this use case.

All I need is support for a few (custom) header (title) fields, which I can't seem to get right:

• Title
• Authors (multiple)
• Affiliations (one per author)
• E-mail (one per author)

And then some text in the document body.

What I tried so far:

---
title: "Untitled"
author:
  - name: First Last
    email: [email protected]
  - name: Another Person
  - name: Third Author
  - name: Firstly Lastly
affiliation: University of Some Place
format: html
---

## Abstract

Some text.


## Extended abstract

Some more text.

The problem here is that in the title block, only the authors show up. Is it possible to also render their affiliations and e-mails?

[dragonstyle]

Can you try:

---
title: "Untitled"
author:
  - name: First Last
    email: [email protected]
    affiliation: University of Some Place
  - name: Another Person
  - name: Third Author
  - name: Firstly Lastly
format: html
---

## Abstract

Some text.


## Extended abstract

Some more text.

More on our author and affiliation and schema here: https://quarto.org/docs/journals/authors.html

[cbrnr]

Thanks, this does show the affiliations! However, emails still don't show up. Probably because this field is not supported in the default template? If this is the case, is there an easy way to add custom fields without using or creating a full-blown extension?

[dragonstyle]

Great - I think you're right that our title block doesn't display email...

You can replace just the title portion of our output with your own template- more here:

https://quarto.org/docs/journals/templates.html#template-partials

with HTML specific partials here:

https://quarto.org/docs/journals/templates.html#html-partials

You don't need to use an extension - you can just reference the template partials directly in your document front matter like:

---
title: My Abstract
template-partials:
  - title-block.html
---

Which will use a title-block.html template sitting next to the document when rendering the HTML title.

[cbrnr]

Thank you so much! I will try that, this looks awesome!

[raphaelbetschart]

I am also trying to add the email address to the title block, I added the following code (take from the RMarkdown template) to the title-block.html:

$if(author.email)$
<a class="author_email" href="mailto:#">$author.email$</a>
$endif$

My YAML header looks like this:

---
title: My Abstract
author:
  - name: First Last
    email: [email protected]
template-partials:
  - title-block.html
 ---

However, the email address still doesn't appear, and the date is lost as well.

[dragonstyle]

Could you share your complete title block template? I think you'll need to write something different as we have a different author structure that rmarkdown had...

[raphaelbetschart]

The title-block.html looks like this:

<header id="title-block-header">
<h1 class="title">$title$</h1>
$if(subtitle)$
<p class="subtitle">$subtitle$</p>

$endif$
$for(author)$
<p class="author">$author$</p>
$endfor$

$if(date)$
<p class="date">$date$</p>
$endif$
$if(author.email)$
<a class="author_email" href="mailto:#">$author.email$</a>
$endif$
$if(abstract)$
<div class="abstract">
<div class="abstract-title">$abstract-title$</div>
$abstract$
</div>
$endif$
</header>

[dragonstyle]

I think this should be more what you're look for:

<header id="title-block-header">
<h1 class="title">$title$</h1>
$if(subtitle)$
<p class="subtitle">$subtitle$</p>
$endif$

$for(by-author)$
<p class="author">$by-author.name.literal$</p>
$if(by-author.email)$
<a class="author_email" href="mailto:#">$by-author.email$</a>
$endif$
$endfor$

$if(date)$
<p class="date">$date$</p>
$endif$

$if(abstract)$
<div class="abstract">
<div class="abstract-title">$abstract-title$</div>
$abstract$
</div>
$endif$

</header>

In Quarto, we normalize all the author metadata into a consistent, predictable schema (no matter how the author writes the metadata). more about that here:

https://quarto.org/docs/journals/authors.html

[cbrnr]

Can I ask two follow-up questions?

1. How can I incorporate affiliations? I tried playing around with it, but I can't get it to show up. For example, I used this header:

---
title: My Abstract
subtitle: Various findings
author:
  - name: John Doe
    email: [email protected]
    affiliations:
      - Institute of Stuff, University of Things, Country
  - name: Another Person
  - name: Third Author
  - name: Firstly Lastly
format: html
template-partials:
  - title-block.html
---

2. I assume to get emails and affiliations in a PDF, I would need to edit another partial template? How would that look like?

[dragonstyle]

To include affiliations, you need to modify the title template to also display that. For example, you do something like:

<header id="title-block-header">
<h1 class="title">$title$</h1>
$if(subtitle)$
<p class="subtitle">$subtitle$</p>
$endif$

$for(by-author)$
<p class="author">$by-author.name.literal$</p>
$if(by-author.email)$
<a class="author_email" href="mailto:#">$by-author.email$</a>
$endif$

$for(by-author.affiliations)$
<p class="affiliation">
  $if(it.url)$
    <a href="$it.url$">
  $endif$ 
  $it.name$
  $if(it.url)$
     </a>
  $endif$
</p>
$endfor$

$endfor$

$if(date)$
<p class="date">$date$</p>
$endif$

$if(abstract)$
<div class="abstract">
<div class="abstract-title">$abstract-title$</div>
$abstract$
</div>
$endif$

</header>

2. For PDF output, you would also want to replace the title handling. Your best best there is to see examples from https://quarto.org/docs/extensions/listing-journals.html. Most of these journal formats will have very custom title display and will illustrate different ways to replace the title presentation of LaTeX documents.

[cbrnr]

I just noticed that title-block-banner: true does not work (i.e. messes up the layout). I assume there is another HTML template I need to edit, right?

[dragonstyle]

I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish - when you enable title-block-banner, which use our custom title block template + CSS to support it. You're most likely mixing your template with title-block-banner CSS, which is likely to result in something undesirable. If you're replacing our title blocks with your own, I'd recommend that you ignore any of our title block options and just implement the title block as you'd like it.

[raphaelbetschart]

Exactly what I was looking for, many thanks!

[raffaem]

Notice that now here is an abstract and keywords YAML keys: https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/front-matter.html

Maybe there weren't when this question was posted?

[mcanouil]

Thanks but in general it is best to avoid resurrecting old threads (2.5 years is quite a resurrection), especially on places dedicated to tools which evolve with time.