Consider adding a `@Manual` BibTeX entry to the CITATION file

[arnaudgallou]

I'd like to cite the sf package in the paper I'm working on but the package doesn't provide a BibTeX entry for the actual package. I can only choose between a citation for a book or article. I'd recommend to add a @Manual BibTeX entry because that's often the most appropriate/easiest citation to use when referencing a package in a publication.

[rsbivand]

toBibtex(citation("sf"))?

[arnaudgallou]

toBibtex(citation("sf")) only returns BibTeX entries for a book and article because there's no explicit @Manual entry available and having a CITATION file stops citation() from generating a citation from the package metadata.

toBibtex(citation("sf"))
#> @Book{,
#>   author = {Edzer Pebesma and Roger Bivand},
#>   title = {{Spatial Data Science: With applications in R}},
#>   year = {2023},
#>   publisher = {{Chapman and Hall/CRC}},
#>   url = {https://r-spatial.org/book/},
#>   doi = {10.1201/9780429459016},
#> }
#> 
#> @Article{,
#>   author = {Edzer Pebesma},
#>   title = {{Simple Features for R: Standardized Support for Spatial Vector Data}},
#>   year = {2018},
#>   journal = {{The R Journal}},
#>   doi = {10.32614/RJ-2018-009},
#>   url = {https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2018-009},
#>   pages = {439--446},
#>   volume = {10},
#>   number = {1},
#> }

^{Created on 2024-06-12 with reprex v2.1.0}

[arnaudgallou]

This is how the rmarkdown developers handle multiple citations that also includes a Manual entry (with automatic updates): https://github.com/rstudio/rmarkdown/blob/main/inst/CITATION

[rsbivand]

Ignore rstudio. ?citation

toBibtex(citation("sf", auto=TRUE))?

[arnaudgallou]

Thanks, toBibtex(citation("sf", auto=TRUE)) returns the appropriate citation.