[R-pkg-devel] Should I ignore a remote-check NOTE on 'Author field differs from Authors maybe from R'?

[Daniel Kelley]

# BACKGROUND

I maintain the 'oce' package, and to avoid problems when I submit a new version, I do some remote tests using

* devtools::check_mac_release()
* devtools::check_win_release()
* devtools::check_win_devel()
* devtools::check_win_oldrelease() # problem

I found that the mac upload fails, but it doesn't state why, and I'll ignore that for now, assuming it to be a temporary problem.  My concern is with the last test, i.e. on system

R version 4.4.3 (2025-02-28 ucrt)

It produces one NOTE.  Looking into this, I see the following in the 00check.log file:

* checking DESCRIPTION meta-information ... NOTE
Author field differs from that derived from Authors using R
  Author:    'Dan Kelley [aut, cre] (ORCID: <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7808-5911>), Clark Richards [aut] (ORCID: <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7833-206X>), Chantelle Layton [ctb] (ORCID: <https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3199-5763>, curl() coauthor), British Geological Survey [ctb, cph] (magnetic-field subroutine)'
  Authors using R: 'Dan Kelley [aut, cre] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7808-5911>), Clark Richards [aut] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7833-206X>), Chantelle Layton [ctb] (<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3199-5763>, curl() coauthor), British Geological Survey [ctb, cph] (magnetic-field subroutine)'

This relates to the following lines in my DESCRIPTION file.

# QUESTION

Should I be doing something about this note?  Note that I have the following in my DESCRIPTION file.

Authors using R: c(
    person(given="Dan", family="Kelley", email="Dan.Kelley using Dal.Ca", role=c("aut", "cre"), comment=c(ORCID="0000-0001-7808-5911")),
    person(given="Clark", family="Richards", email="clark.richards using gmail.com", role=c("aut"), comment=c(ORCID="0000-0002-7833-206X")),
    person(given="Chantelle", family="Layton", email="chantelle.layton using dal.ca", role=c("ctb"), comment=c(ORCID="0000-0002-3199-5763", "curl() coauthor")),
    person(given="British Geological Survey", role=c("ctb","cph"), comment="magnetic-field subroutine"))