4. Publications

Publications are not a YAML section but a BibTeX file, because that is what reference managers export: content/publications.bib. What the website and the PDF show of it is decided by lists — "the three newest", "all of them, grouped", "my selected papers" — written once in content/publication-lists.yml, and shown wherever you like.

Your BibTeX file

Export your publications from Zotero, JabRef, Google Scholar or arXiv as BibTeX, and replace the contents of content/publications.bib with it.

One field is vitakit's own: status says what an entry is.

@article{berger2024trees,
  author  = {Berger, Lena and Doe, Jane},
  title   = {The shape of large random $k$-ary trees},
  journal = {Random Structures \& Algorithms},
  year    = {2024},
  doi     = {10.5555/12345678},
  status  = {published},
}

@misc{berger2025ascents,
  author = {Berger, Lena},
  title  = {Sharp bounds for ascent sequences of height $h$},
  year   = {2025},
  arxiv  = {2501.01234},
  status = {preprint},
}

The statuses are published, accepted, preprint, software and other; an entry without status is published. Lena's export has no status fields, so everything counts as published. She adds status = {preprint} to her two preprints, and status = {software} to the package she wrote. Mathematics in titles works as everywhere else.

Where your publications appear

Open content/publication-lists.yml. Below a comment explaining every setting, it has two lists:

all:
  groupBy: status

recent:
  limit: 3

List	What it shows	Where it is shown
all	every publication, newest first, grouped by status: Published, then Preprints, …	the /publications/ page, and the PDF
recent	the three newest, of any status, in one list	the home page, next to the recent talks

Where a list is shown is one line in a page or a PDF document, naming it:

<!-- app/pages/publications.vue -->
<VitaPublications list="all" />

% cv-tex/cv.tex
\vitapublications[Publications]{all}

So the list decides which publications, in what order and in which groups; the page or the PDF decides where, and under which heading. The same list shows the same publications everywhere.

Lena would like five recent publications on her home page. She changes recent:

recent:
  limit: 5

and the home page shows five as soon as she saves.

A list of her own

Lena keeps a tag selected in Zotero for the papers she is proudest of, and Zotero exports tags as keywords = {selected}. She wants those on her publications page, above the full list. vitakit add publication-list sets it up — run without options, it asks:

pnpm

pnpm vitakit add publication-list selected --where keywords=selected

npm

npx vitakit add publication-list selected --where keywords=selected

Show selected on which page of your website?
  1  /  (app/pages/index.vue)
  2  /cv/  (app/pages/cv.vue)
  3  /publications/  (app/pages/publications.vue)   (Enter)
  4  not on the website, for now
>
Include selected in the PDF cv-tex/cv.tex? [y/N]
Heading [Selected]: Selected publications

~ content/publication-lists.yml   declares the list selected
  + selected:
  +   where: { keywords: selected }
~ app/pages/publications.vue   shows the list selected after all
        <VitaPublications list="all" class="mt-8" />
  +     <VitaPublications list="selected" title="Selected publications" />

Write these changes? [Y/n]

Every change is shown before it is made. She wants the selected papers first, so she moves the new line above <VitaPublications list="all" … /> in app/pages/publications.vue — the order of the lines is the order on the page.

Without --where, the command asks what to select instead: all publications or only some statuses, how many, in what order, and whether in groups. Lists can do more than it asks — pick papers by citation key, sort by title, group by year; every setting, with examples, is in publications. They are all a line or two of YAML, like recent above.

Why is a paper not in my list?

One of Lena's selected papers is missing. vitakit explain takes a list's name:

pnpm

pnpm vitakit explain selected

npm

npx vitakit explain selected

selected

  list      content/publication-lists.yml:25
            keywords selected · newest first
  shows     4 of 12 publications (where keywords: selected −8)
            berger2025ascents, berger2024trees, berger2023urns, doe2021

  website   /publications/   app/pages/publications.vue:26   <VitaPublications title="Selected publications">

  pdf       not in any PDF document

The citation key she expected is not among the four: in Zotero, that paper has no selected tag yet. vitakit explain publications gives the same overview for all lists at once.

A list naming a field or a status that no publication has is an error rather than an empty list, so a typo such as keywords=selcted is caught, naming the list.

Links after each reference

doi, arxiv, mrnumber (MathSciNet) and zbl (zbMATH) become small links after each reference on the website; the title links to the url, else the DOI, else arXiv. Exports write these fields in several ways — doi:10.…, a full https://doi.org/…, eprint with eprinttype = {arxiv} — and all of them work. In the PDF, the DOI is printed and arXiv becomes an eprint link.

Your own statuses

Lena wants her talk slides listed too, and calls preprints "Submitted". The statuses, the headings of their groups and their order, and the links are set in schemas/publications.ts; this writes vitakit's defaults there to start from:

pnpm

pnpm vitakit customize publications

npm

npx vitakit customize publications

export default publications({
  statuses: [
    { id: 'published', label: 'Published' },
    { id: 'preprint', label: 'Submitted' },
    { id: 'software', label: 'Software' },
    { id: 'slides', label: 'Talk slides' },   // status = {slides}
  ],
  defaultStatus: 'published',
  // badges: …, fields: …
})

Every list grouped by status now shows these headings, in this order, on the website and in the PDF. A status that is not one of them is an error naming the entry. See publications for badges of your own and further fields.

How references read

On the website, references are formatted with a CSL style, the format reference managers use; the default suits mathematics. Any style from the Zotero style repository works: save it as content/publications.csl. In the PDF, biblatex typesets them, styled in cv-tex/ — so the two look slightly different, which is expected.

Check http://localhost:3000/publications/: the selected papers, the groups, the links, the mathematics.

Next: a section of your own.