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heliophysicsPy / standards

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Standardize citation method in PyHC software #36

Open rebeccaringuette opened 2 months ago

rebeccaringuette commented 2 months ago

Interested in having a common way across all PyHC packages to retrieve the correct citation (e.g. BibTex) for the software package, and to include the software version number and DOI in that information. For the R language, the citation information can be retrieved by using 

citation("package_name")

but there is no such standardization in Python. SunPy offers the 

sunpy.__citation__

option. What do other packages offer programmatically? If not many others have this feature already, could we go with the method SunPy already has?

wtbarnes commented 2 months ago

We also provide some narrative guidance in our documentation: https://docs.sunpy.org/en/stable/citation.html, the general idea being that you should cite a DOI corresponding to the exact version as well as our v1.0 paper which is a more formal publication. I wonder if we could just standardize on this recommendation or something similar?

rebeccaringuette commented 2 months ago

Clarifying the scope here. This is pointing to the programmatic citation method, which would benefit PyHC users to have standardized across the packages to make it easier for them to cite your packages.
Could add to this conversation exactly what would be cited. My opinion is to cite the specific version of the package, not the general DOI and not an associated publication DOI. For specific versions attached to a JOSS paper, that DOI could work, but would need to be updated in the package software for future versions.
Also, if this is standardized, the current citation could be programmatically incorporated into the PyHC listing, the Heliophysics Software Search Interface now in development, and the PyHC software environment(s).