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  • Status: accepted · Date: 2026-07-17 · Deciders: Davor Runje

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Context

The literature registry’s bibliographic-facts layer (ADR-0008) needs a concrete format. BibTeX and CSL-JSON are losslessly inter-convertible (Zotero/pandoc), so the real choice is which is the hand-edited/authoritative source and which is generated. The honest-scholar skills manipulate this layer programmatically (scout appends rows, triage joins by key, position builds matrices).

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Decision drivers

  • Robust, well-specified parsing/validation for programmatic manipulation.
  • Git-native, scriptable posture.
  • LaTeX manuscripts still need .bib to \cite from.

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Considered options

  1. CSL-JSON as source of truth; BibTeX exported at paper-build time.
  2. BibTeX as source of truth; CSL-JSON generated when needed.

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Decision

Option 1. CSL-JSON (clean schema, robust to parse/validate, good Unicode; the format Zotero/pandoc use internally) is authoritative; .bib is produced on demand via pandoc/Zotero for LaTeX.

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Consequences

  • The machine-manipulated layer is robust; LaTeX is still served by export.
  • Authors who prefer hand-editing .bib treat it as a generated view.

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Rejected alternatives

  • BibTeX-primary — loosely specified (classic vs BibLaTeX dialects), inconsistent field semantics, awkward Unicode, harder to parse robustly — poor fit for the programmatic manipulation the skills do.
sub-spec 2 §4, §7; ADR-0008.