The Citation File Format project

In this repository, the Steering Committee of the Citation File Format project maintains documents regarding the governance of the project.

The governance of the Citation File Format project is described in the governance document.

Aims

The Citation File Format makes it easier for research software engineers and researchers to make their software citable, and for their users to cite it.

We do this by

• maintaining and further developing a schema for a file format for software citation metadata that is writable and readable by humans and machines;
• creating tooling, and technical infrastructure that lower the barriers to working with software citation metadata;
• working with software citation experts, open source developers, research software engineers and metadata projects and their users to ensure that our outputs are usable and useful, and meet their requirements;
• creating a welcoming and inclusive community, where we work equitably and are valued, to help each other and achieve our goals; and
• advocating for and enabling better software citation practice.

This work is important because, when software is cited, 1) research software becomes part of the scholarly record, and 2) the people that create the software receive credit for their work. Citing software also creates provenance for research and enables reproducibility.

Scope

The Citation File Format project primarily focuses on citation metadata for software.

Code of Conduct

The Citation File Format project has adopted a Code of Conduct (CoC), also available on the Code of Conduct page on the project website. This CoC is binding for the Citation File Format project and all of its subprojects. Subprojects can delegate the handling of CoC violations to the CoC Committee of the Citation File Format project, or form their own CoC committees. The Citation File Format project CoC Committee must be informed when subprojects form their own CoC committees.