Software Citation Implementation Challenges
Published in arXiv, 2019
Recommended citation: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08674v1
This paper is a pre-print (not peer-reviewed) about the software citation implementation challenges. It provides 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.
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Abstract
The main output of the FORCE11 Software Citation working group (this https URL) was a paper on software citation principles (this https URL) 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.