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|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1686/WSSSPE4_paper_31.pdf
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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1686/WSSSPE4_paper_31.pdf
Lightning Talk: Software Citation: Process,
Principles, and Implementation
Daniel S. Katz∗ , Kyle E. Niemeyer† , Arfon M. Smith‡ , FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group§
∗ University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA, Email: d.katz@ieee.org
† Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA, Email: Kyle.Niemeyer@oregonstate.edu
‡ GitHub, Inc., San Francisco, California, USA, Email: arfon@github.com
§ FORCE11, https://www.force11.org/group/software-citation-working-group
Abstract—Software is a critical part of modern research and Seventeen discrete use cases related to software citation
yet there is little support across the scholarly ecosystem for its were established to help understand the necessary require-
acknowledgement and citation. Inspired by the activities of the ments for citation. These involve 13 stakeholder types, in-
FORCE11 working group focused on data citation, FORCE11
started a Software Citation Working Group (SCWG). The cluding researchers, research software engineers, publishers,
group initially sought members, and currently has about 55– indexers, domain groups, libraries, archives, repositories, fun-
60 members. The working group reviewed existing community ders, policy makers, evaluators, and citation managers. The use
practices, developed a set of use cases, and drafted a software cases helped identify the basic metadata needed in a citation of
citation principles document. software: unique identifier, software name, author(s), version
This presentation will discuss the principles (in brief: impor-
tance, credit and attribution, unique identification, persistence,
number, release date, and location. Interestingly, only unique
accessibility, and specificity), how they will impact the practice identifier was needed for all use cases. Beyond the princi-
of research, and they can be implemented by researchers, ples of software citation themselves, the document contains
publishers, librarians and others who build and maintain reposi- extensive discussion about the principles and related topics.
tories, scholars of science, university administrators, and research These topics include which unique identifiers should be used
funders. It should also spark discussion in Track 2 of WSSSPE4
about both the next steps related to software citation and the
(DOIs are recommended), what software should be cited, the
community goals related to software credit, reproducibility, and role of software papers, how to cite derived software, basic
sustainability. elements of a citation format in reference lists, the elimination
of citation limits, the types of software that should be cited
I. L IGHTNING TALK (all), and what an identifier should resolve to. In addition, the
document contains a discussion of past and other work related
Software is a critical part of modern research and yet to software citation, both in specific domains and the general
there is little support across the scholarly ecosystem for its research software community.
acknowledgement and citation. Inspired by the activities of the The FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group then made
FORCE11 working group focused on data citation, FORCE11 a set of recommendations for Software Citation Principles
started a Software Citation Working Group (SCWG). The at the full FORCE2016 meeting April 2016. This has the
group initially sought members, and currently has about 55–60 goal of encouraging broad adoption of a consistent policy
people (researchers, developers, publishers, repositories, librar- for software citation across disciplines and venues. The group
ians) as members, including members of WSSSPE3 software also presented a discussion of the motivations for developing
credit breakout group who joined en masse in October 2015. the principles, reviews of existing community practice, and a
The working group reviewed existing community practices, discussion of the requirements these principles would place
including those of groups such as the Software Sustainability upon different stakeholders.
Institute, WSSSPE, Project CRediT, Ontosoft, and CodeMeta, Working examples and possible technical solutions for how
and in domains such as astronomy and astrophysics, life these principles can be implemented will be discussed in a
sciences, geosciences. The group then developed a set of separate paper that is being developed.
use cases (collaborative via a Google Doc [1]). Finally, the After the FORCE2016 events, the working group modified
group drafted a software citation principles document, starting the principles document to reflect issues that were raised, and
with the FORCE11 data citation principles, and then updated then published the draft document on the FORCE11 web-
the equivalent software principles based on the software use site [2] and called for public comments, which were made via
cases and related work, a set of working group discussions, Hypothes.is (http://hypothes.is) annotations, GitHub issues,
community feedback and review of the draft, and feedback and emails. All comments were compiled into a document
and discussion in a one-day workshop at FORCE2016 in April on GitHub [3], and explanation of the working group chairs’
2016. responses (e.g., document changes, further discussion, etc.)
This work is licensed under a CC-BY-4.0 license. were also recorded there. All previous work by the group was
also done in the open, and recorded on GitHub, so that all citation and the community goals related to software credit,
decisions/discussions can be traced. reproducibility, and sustainability.
The final draft paper was then submitted to PeerJ Computer
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Science, published in PeerJ Preprints, and posted on the
FORCE11 website [2]. Initial review comments were returned The authors would like to thank all members of the
8 July 2016, and the working group chairs recently (1 August FORCE11 Software Citation Group (listed in [3]), the mem-
2016) submitted a revised version, and updated the PeerJ bers of the FORCE11 executive committee for suggesting this
Preprints document [4]. Our goal is to have a final version activity and supporting our work on it, and the WSSSPE
of the paper accepted and published by WSSSPE4. community (http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk) for also
The remaining plans of the Software Citation Working suggesting this activity and providing a group of active par-
Group involve promotion and distribution of the Software ticipants over 3 meetings and the set of FORCE11 working
Citation Principles, specifically an endorsement effort to get group activities.
both individuals and organizations to sign on to the principles Work by Daniel S. Katz was supported in part by the
and related, creation of some publicity material such as an National Science Foundation (NSF) while working at the
infographic and 1–3 slides. After this, the Software Citation Foundation. Any opinion, finding, and conclusions or recom-
Working Group will have completed its work and will end. mendations expressed in this material are those of the author
Next, we expect FORCE11 to spin up of a new working and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. Work by
group focused on implementing the software citation princi- Kyle E. Niemeyer was supported in part by the NSF under
ples. This group will work with institutions, publishers, fun- grant ACI-1535065.
ders, researchers, etc., to implement the principles established R EFERENCES
by the first group, and will write an implementation examples
[1] FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group, “Software
paper. citation use cases,” https://docs.google.com/document/d/
This presentation will discuss the principles (in brief: impor- 1dS0SqGoBIFwLB5G3HiLLEOSAAgMdo8QPEpjYUaWCvIU, 2016.
tance, credit and attribution, unique identification, persistence, Accessed: 2016-07-10.
[2] A. M. Smith, D. S. Katz, K. E. Niemeyer, and FORCE11 Software
accessibility, and specificity), how they will impact the practice Citation Working Group “Software Citation Principles,” FORCE2016
of research, and they can be implemented by researchers, Website, https://www.force11.org/software-citation-principles, 2016. Ac-
publishers, librarians and others who build and maintain cessed: 2016-07-10.
[3] FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group, GitHub repository, https:
repositories, scholars of science, university administrators, and //github.com/force11/force11-scwg. Accessed: 2016-07-10.
research funders. It should also spark discussion in Track 2 [4] A. M. Smith, D. S. Katz, K. E. Niemeyer, and FORCE11 Software
of WSSSPE4 about both the next steps related to software Citation Working Group, “Software Citation Principles,” PeerJ Preprints
4:e2169v3, 2016. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2169v3.