Recognizing the value of software: a software citation guide
Open accessAbstract
Software is as integral as a research paper, monograph, or dataset in terms of facilitating the full understanding and dissemination of research. This article provides broadly applicable guidance on software citation for the communities and institutions publishing academic journals and conference proceedings. We expect those communities and institutions to produce versions of this document with software examples and citation styles that are appropriate for their intended audience. This article (and those community-specific versions) are aimed at authors citing software, including software developed by the authors or by others. We also include brief instructions on how software can be made citable, directing readers to more comprehensive guidance published elsewhere. The guidance presented in this article helps to support proper attribution and credit, reproducibility, collaboration and reuse, and encourages building on the work of others to further research.
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Tools used in research are typically disclosed in the body of the text, and software applications are also cited with in-text citations and in the references.
“Tools used in research are typically disclosed in the body of the text, and in the case of software applications, they are also cited with in-text citations and in the references (Katz et al., 2021).”
From The ethics of disclosing the use of artificial intelligence tools in writing scholarly manuscripts (2023) · cites this paper as Katz et al., 2021
The Software citation essentials section recommends citing software used in research, including software described in the Methods section. The In-text referencing and Software citation examples sections show in-text citations and reference entries for software. The paper offers guidance and examples, however; it does not establish that research tools are typically disclosed or that software is routinely cited this way. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Research works printed but not linked: 5
- Cousijn H Kenall A Ganley E: A data citation roadmap for scientific publishers. Sci Data. 2018; 5: 180259. 10.1038/sdata.2018.259| 30457573 PMC6244190 · DOI
- Data Citation Synthesis Group: Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles.Future of Research Communication and e-Scholarship (FORCE11). 2014 10.25490/a97f-egyk · DOI
- Fenner M Crosas M Grethe JS: A data citation roadmap for scholarly data repositories. Sci Data. 2019; 6(1): 28. 10.1038/s41597-019-0031-8| 30971690 PMC6472386 · DOI
- Katz DS Niemeyer KE Smith AM: Software vs. data in the context of citation. PeerJ Prepr. 2016; 4: e2630v1 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2630v1 · DOI
- Smith AM Katz DS Niemeyer KE: Software Citation Principles. PeerJ Comput Sci. 2016; 2: e86 10.7717/peerj-cs.86 · DOI
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The ethics of disclosing the use of artificial intelligence tools in writing scholarly manuscripts
Hosseini, M., Resnik, D. B., & Holmes, K. (2023) · Research Ethics · doi:10.1177/17470161231180449 · Cited by 253 · see citing works
Publication ethics in the era of artificial intelligence
Kocak, Z. (2024) · Journal of Korean Medical Science · doi:10.3346/jkms.2024.39.e249 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
AI-readiness Criteria for Biomedical Data
Clark, T., Caufield, H., Parker, J. A., Al Manir, S., Amorim, E., Eddy, J., Gim, N., Gow, B., Goar, W., Hansen, J. N., et al. (2024) · doi:10.1101/2024.10.23.619844 · Cited by 32 · see citing works
Self-citationThe Future of Research Software Is the Future of Research
Chue Hong, N. P., Aragon, S., Hettrick, S., & Jay, C. (2025) · Patterns · doi:10.1016/j.patter.2025.101322 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Katz, D. S., Chue Hong, N. P., Clark, T., Muench, A., Stall, S., Bouquin, D., Cannon, M., Edmunds, S., Faez, T., Feeney, P., Fenner, M., Friedman, M., Grenier, G., Harrison, M., Heber, J., Leary, A., MacCallum, C., Murray, H., Pastrana, E., Perry, K., Schuster, D., Stockhause, M., & Yeston, J.
- Affiliations
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- University of Virginia (US)
- American Astronomical Society (US)
- American Geophysical Union (US)
- Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (US)
- Taylor and Francis (United Kingdom) (GB)
- GigaScience Press (HK)
- Elsevier BV (Netherlands) (NL)
- Crossref (US)
- DataCite (DE)
- American Meteorological Society (US)
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (US)
- eLife Sciences Publications (GB)
- Public Library of Science (US)
- Oxford University Press (United Kingdom) (GB)
- Hindawi (United Kingdom) (GB)
- Faculty of 1000 (United Kingdom) (GB)
- John Wiley & Sons (United States) (US)
- NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (US)
- German Climate Computing Centre (DE)
- American Association For The Advancement of Science (US)
- Corresponding author
- Katz, Daniel S.
- ORCID
- Katz, Daniel S.
- Chue Hong, Neil P.
- Clark, Tim
- Muench, August
- Stall, Shelley
- Bouquin, Daina
- Cannon, Matthew
- Edmunds, Scott
- Feeney, Patricia
- Fenner, Martin
- Friedman, Michael
- Grenier, Gerry
- Harrison, Melissa
- Heber, Joerg
- Leary, Adam
- MacCallum, Catriona
- Murray, Hollydawn
- Perry, Katherine
- Schuster, Douglas
- Stockhause, Martina
- Yeston, Jake
- Venue
- F1000Research
- Publisher
- F1000 Research Ltd
- Published
- 2021-01-12
- Volume
- 9
- Pages
- 1257
- ISSN
- 2046-1402 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7805487
- OpenAlex
- W3120914506
- Cited by
- 59
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 10
- FWCI
- 10.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- F1000Research (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/S021779/1)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Research Data Management Practices
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Scientific Computing and Data Management
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › scientometrics and bibliometrics research
- Keywords
- software citation, reproducibility
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