Background:
Smith AM, Katz DS, Niemeyer KE, FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group. (2016) Software Citation Principles. PeerJ Computer Science 2:e86. 10.7717/peerj-cs.86
FORCE11: Software Citation Implementation Working Group
This white paper outlines issues that impact software citation implementation in astronomy.
The white paper was also reposted by Astronomy Computing Today and Generation R.
An update compiled by the FORCE11 Software Citation Implementation Working Group:
Katz, D. S., Bouquin, D., Chue Hong, N. P., Hausman, J., Jones, C., Chivvis, D., … Zhang, Q. (2019). Software Citation Implementation Challenges. ArXiv E-Prints, arXiv:1905.08674. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019arXiv190508674K/abstract
The main output of the FORCE11 Software Citation working group was a paper on software citation principles published in September 2016. This paper laid out a set of six high-level principles for software citation (importance, credit and attribution, unique identification, persistence, accessibility, and specificity) and discussed how they could be used to implement software citation in the scholarly community. In a series of talks and other activities, we have promoted software citation using these increasingly accepted principles. At the time the initial paper was published, we also provided guidance and examples on how to make software citable, though we now realize there are unresolved problems with that guidance. The purpose of this document is to provide an explanation of current issues impacting scholarly attribution of research software, organize updated implementation guidance, and identify where best practices and solutions are still needed.
The files here support an ongoing case study on software citation practices in astronomy over the last 20 years.
Next steps: CfA Library staff plan to create resources and tools to support software citation implementation in astronomy— the white paper and the results of the 2019 case study will be used to prioritize their development