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Add information about how to cite software #89

Closed brechmos-stsci closed 5 years ago

brechmos-stsci commented 5 years ago

As part of the #83 PR, @arfon brought up the point that we should add information about how to cite the software.

So, a PR should be put in that adds information about how to cite the software (e.g., bibtex), and/or a __citation__ method, and/or a CITATION file.

brechmos-stsci commented 5 years ago

There is some interesting semi-recent discussion of how to cite (python) software at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/python-ideas/RHBcpu1QNIA (including input from Guido). This discussion from 6 months ago also reference https://github.com/adrn/CitationPEP (which is authored by several here, cough cough, including Arfon, Tom and Erik).

Around 8 months ago astropy made an addition to __citation__ / CITATION (https://github.com/bsipocz/astropy/blob/f84c287f73e76984825fb5aabd73123f9c0cf9bf/astropy/__init__.py#L263). The CITATION file contains text that suggests how to reference astropy including a bibtex entry.

I think https://citation-file-format.github.io might be a step too far right now and not sure how much traction there is for it currently.

I don't see any citation information in the code for numpy and scipy currently. They both appear to include it in their documentation.