Software Citation

Software citation is important to receive credit for software outputs and to ensure permanent references to the software.

While platforms such as GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket are great for reuse and collaboration, they are no long-term solutions for software preservation. Instead, a snapshot of the software should be shared using a data repository. This data repository will provide you with a persistent identifier, or DOI, which is key for making the code citable.

Some data repositories, such as Zenodo and 4TU.ResearchData, have integrations with GitHub so that you can easily share a release of your software repositories.

• Zenodo & GitHub

• Figshare & GitHub

Once you shared your software on a data repository and received a DOI, it is important to let others know how they should cite your data. If you’re reusing software of others, you should also properly cite their work.

CFFinit

There is a tool that helps you create a CITATION.cff for your software: CFFinit. Watch the tutorials to learn how to create a CITATION.cff file, or how to update it.

Software citation: how to format?

The recommended format (Katz et al. 2020) for software citation is to include:

• Creator(s): the authors or project that developed the software.

• Title: the name of the software.

• Publication venue: the publication venue of the software, preferentially, an archive or repository that provides persistent identifiers.

• Date: the date the software was published.

• Identifier: a resolvable pointer to the software, preferentially, a PID that resolves to a landing page containing descriptive metadata about the software, similar to how a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for a paper that points to a page about the paper rather than directly to a representation of the paper, such as the PDF.

• Version: the identifier for the version of the software being referenced. If the version is unidentified or unknown, the date of access should be used.

• Type: some citation styles (e.g., APA), require a bracketed description of the citation (e.g., [Computer software]) to be included.

If a published article exists that describes the software, it should be cited as an additional reference.

Note

Example (APA): Developer, A. A., Developer, B. B., & Developer, C. C. (yyyy) 1. Title of the software: Subtitle (Version #.#) 2. [Computer software] 3. Publisher 4. https://URL5

See Katz et al. 2020) for more examples.

Software Citation Checklist for Authors by Neil Chue Hong et al..

• Have I identified the software which makes a significant and specialised contribution to my academic work?

• Have I checked if the software has a recommended citation?

  • If this is to a paper, have I also cited the software directly?

  • If there’s no recommended citation, have I created as complete a citation as possible?

    • Who created the software

    • When it was created

    • Title of the software (and version if available)

    • Where the software can be accessed

• Have I referenced the software appropriately in my academic work, complying with any citation formatting guidelines?

Software Citation Checklist for Developers by Neil Chue Hong et al.

• Have I assigned an appropriate license to my software?

• Have I described my software properly, using an appropriate metadata format, and included this metadata file with my software?

  • Have I given my software a clear version number?

  • Have I determined the authors to be credited for this release of my software, and included this in my metadata file?

• Have I procured a persistent identifier for this release of my software?

• Have I added my recommended citation to the documentation for my software?

Example

More information

• See also the posts on licensing, good enough FAIR software
• For more information about the practicalities and timing in linking your research outputs, see The Turing Way.
• What [you] should know about software citation