Citing Code

Similar to traditional citation of peer research results in scientific publications including theory and instrumental setups, software (or any citable code in general) can and should be cited accordingly. A significant difference to usual citations in science is that the performance of code can vary depending on factors like system architecture and code version. Therefore, code citation should include the following points:

• creator(s)
• software title
• publication venue, like an archive or repository with some kind of PID
• date of release or software version
• some type of PID (persistent identifier), like a DOI (digital object identifier), which does not directly point to the object itself, but rather to a site describing the object and linking to it