Software Citation in Theory and Practice

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development, challenges, and importance of establishing a standardized system for citing software in scholarly research to improve recognition and integration into academic metrics.

Contribution

It introduces the principles for software citation, highlights progress with over 50,000 DOIs issued, and discusses ongoing challenges in adoption and infrastructure integration.

Findings

Over 50,000 software DOIs issued.

Development of principles for software citation.

Challenges in promoting and integrating software citation.

Abstract

In most fields, computational models and data analysis have become a significant part of how research is performed, in addition to the more traditional theory and experiment. Mathematics is no exception to this trend. While the system of publication and credit for theory and experiment (journals and books, often monographs) has developed and has become an expected part of the culture, how research is shared and how candidates for hiring, promotion are evaluated, software (and data) do not have the same history. A group working as part of the FORCE11 community developed a set of principles for software citation that fit software into the journal citation system, allow software to be published and then cited, and there are now over 50,000 DOIs that have been issued for software. However, some challenges remain, including: promoting the idea of software citation to developers and users; collaborating with publishers to ensure that systems collect and retain required metadata; ensuring that the rest of the scholarly infrastructure, particularly indexing sites, include software; working with communities so that software efforts "count" and understanding how best to cite software that has not been published.