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Re: Citation format for Octave


From: Carnë Draug
Subject: Re: Citation format for Octave
Date: Sun, 24 May 2015 03:53:48 +0100

On 12 May 2015 at 00:03, rik <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> John, Carnë, and anyone else who regularly writes academic papers,
>
> What should the citation() function return for Octave 4.0?  The current
> text of the file is:
>
> -- CITATION --
> To cite GNU Octave in publications use:
>
>   John W. Eaton, David Bateman, Søren Hauberg, Rik Wehbring (2014).
>   GNU Octave version 3.8.1 manual: a high-level interactive language for
>   numerical computations.
>   CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.  ISBN 1441413006,
>   URL http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter/
>
> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is:
>
>   @book{,
>     author    = {John W. Eaton, David Bateman, S\oren Hauberg, and Rik
> Wehbring},
>     title     = {{GNU Octave} version 3.8.1 manual: a high-level
> interactive language for numerical computations},
>     publisher = {CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform},
>     year      = {2014},
>     note      = {{ISBN} 1441413006},
>     url       = {http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/doc/interpreter},
>   }
>
> We have invested a lot of time and effort in creating GNU Octave, please
> cite it
> when using it.  See also `citation pkgname' for citing Octave packages.
>
> -- End CITATION --
>
> This is clearly not right, but just changing the version to 4.0.0 isn't
> going to make the ISBN number correct.  Should we drop the publisher and
> note fields entirely?
>

We have an entry on the FAQ about this (which should be updated now).

    http://wiki.octave.org/FAQ#How_can_I_cite_Octave.3F

We ask users to cite the software itself.  Since not every journal will allow
this, the recommendation is to cite the published book if not possible.  But
citing software is becoming more common, and there will be fewer issues if
users try to cite it nowadays.

There's this article [1] from the Software Sustainability Institute that
discusses how to best cite software (this is aimed at the users not at
developers, but it's a good view on the subject).

Roughly, recommendation is to cite the software.  It specially recommends
against citing a paper or version of a manual (like R does), because it's
not version specific.  The following are some points from section 7 of the
article:

    * In the first draft of a paper, always put software citations in
      references or bibliographies.
    * Be prepared to debate with reviewers why you have cited the software:
      you want to acknowledge the contribution of the software's authors and
      the value of software as a legitimate research output.
    * If a reviewer disagrees with a formal software citation, you can still
      make a general reference to the software in the paper.
    * If the software has a DOI (digital object identifier) use it to cite
      the software. If the software has its own website, use the website's
      URL for the citation.

I think we should recommend.  Have a ready to use reference for the
software itself and a DOI (we can have one for each Octave release).

And I guess we could some more public service and have citation() tell users
at the end that at very least, they should note the version of software used
in text, not for the sake of Octave developers, but on the interest of
reproducible research.

Carnë

[1] http://software.ac.uk/so-exactly-what-software-did-you-use



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