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skyfielders / python-skyfield

Elegant astronomy for Python
MIT License
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Citing Skyfield in publications #213

Closed bersavosh closed 6 years ago

bersavosh commented 6 years ago

Thank you for the wonderful package. I was wondering if there is a preferred way to cite the SkyField package?

brandon-rhodes commented 6 years ago

Skyfield has never been described in an academic paper so, alas, there is not a source that could be cited as a formal citation! The name "Skyfield" (note the lower case "f"), my own name as the project lead, and the URL of the project here on GitHub would be reasonable identifiers, as would its site URL here:

https://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/

I seem to remember getting this question at least once before, maybe in email. I wonder if there is an existing paper that references Skyfield we could find, and re-use its choice in how it formatted the reference?

Thanks for your interest in attributing the work of the Skyfield project and its contributors!

bersavosh commented 6 years ago

Ok, great, thanks!

Searching ADS briefly, I find at least two papers mentioning the package (Kounkel et al. and Albert et al.), both of which seem to simply mention the URL (the latter actually mentions your name as well).

brandon-rhodes commented 6 years ago

Then let's consider the URL canonical for the moment. Thanks again for working to cite it properly! :)

bersavosh commented 6 years ago

If there isn't a paper in the works on this package, it might be beneficial to obtain a DOI for this project either through Zenodo or ASCL. This would show the impact of this wonderful package more clearly. :-)

brandon-rhodes commented 6 years ago

Good idea! I just did a search for DOI, and it looks like valid URLs are allowed to serve as DOIs, so since two papers have already used it, let's make this the official DOI:

http://rhodesmill.org/skyfield/

Note the "http:", since both papers cited the project before I got around to adding https. Let's keep it "http:" for citations so the match textually. I'll keep this issue open until I can add the DOI to the official documentation. Thanks for the idea!

brandon-rhodes commented 6 years ago

I have added the DOI to the docs, which should appear on the web site the next time the docs are regenerated. Thanks for the idea!