Citation

Overview

Questions

• How can I make my work easier to cite?

Objectives

• Make your work easy to cite

You may want to include a file called CITATION or CITATION.txt that describes how to reference your project; the one for Software Carpentry states:

Callout

Make Citation Easy for Your Users

If someone wants to cite your code in their paper, they should be able to find a CITATION file and copy-paste the citation. This increases the chances they’ll actually cite you. Consider including both plain text and BibTeX formats to accommodate different workflows. Getting proper citation credit is important for academic careers.

To reference Software Carpentry in publications, please cite both of the following:

Greg Wilson: "Software Carpentry: Getting Scientists to Write Better
Code by Making Them More Productive".  Computing in Science &
Engineering, Nov-Dec 2006.

Greg Wilson: "Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned". arXiv:1307.5448,
July 2013.

@article{wilson-software-carpentry-2006,
    author =  {Greg Wilson},
    title =   {Software Carpentry: Getting Scientists to Write Better Code by Making Them More Productive},
    journal = {Computing in Science \& Engineering},
    month =   {November--December},
    year =    {2006},
}

@online{wilson-software-carpentry-2013,
  author      = {Greg Wilson},
  title       = {Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned},
  version     = {1},
  date        = {2013-07-20},
  eprinttype  = {arxiv},
  eprint      = {1307.5448}
}

More detailed advice, and other ways to make your code citable can be found at the Software Sustainability Institute blog and in:

Smith AM, Katz DS, Niemeyer KE, FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group. (2016) Software citation
principles. [PeerJ Computer Science 2:e86](https://peerj.com/articles/cs-86/)
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.8

There is also an @software{... BibTeX entry type in case no “umbrella” citation like a paper or book exists for the project you want to make citable.

Key Points

• Add a CITATION file to a repository to explain how you want your work cited.