Use case 1: citing software in paper

[kyleniemeyer]

One of the most common use cases may be researchers who use someone else’s software and want to cite it in a technical paper. This will be similar to existing practices for citing research artifacts in papers.

“Requirements” for researcher:

• Name of software
• Names of software authors/contributors
• Software version number and release date, or download date
• Location/repository, or contact name/email (if not publicly available)
• Citable DOI of software
• Format for citing software in text and in bibliography

Possible steps:

• Software developers create CITATION file and associate with source code release/repository.
• Researcher finds and uses software for research paper.
• Researcher identifies citation metadata file (e.g., “CITATION” file) associated with downloaded/installed software source code or in online repository/published location.
• CITATION file includes necessary citation metadata
• CITATION file may include BibTeX entry, suggested citation format
• Researcher cites software appropriately, e.g. in methodology section; reference included in bibliography.
• Need to add more cases for this use case, e.g. what happens if the code is commercial, if it comes from a package manager (e.g., binary, macports), etc?

[npch]

I could probably contribute a case for commercial code.