CITATION.cff

documentation
FAIR software
Last reviewed

November 14, 2024

Last modified

November 27, 2024

It’s straightforward to cite research papers, but with software sometimes it’s not as obvious. It is recommended to place a CITATION.cff file in the root of your repository to inform others about the preferred way to cite the software. GitHub can automatically parse the .cff file to create citation snippets in APA or BibTeX format. If you’d prefer the software to be cited through a journal publication, you can mention this in the README and in the CITATION.cff file.

cff-version: 1.2.0
message: "If you are using this software, please cite it as shown below."
authors:
- family-names: "Doe"
  given-names: "Jane"
  orcid: "https://orcid.org/9999-9999-9999-9999"
title: "Name of your software"
version: 1.0.1
doi: "11.1111/11111"
date-released: 2024-12-31
license: MIT
url: "https://github.com/your_repo"

When citing a paper that is linked to the software you can use preferred-citation argument.

cff-version: 1.2.0
message: "If you are using this software, please cite it as shown below."
authors:
- family-names: "Doe"
  given-names: "Jane"
  orcid: "https://orcid.org/9999-9999-9999-9999"
title: "Name of your software"
version: 1.0.1
doi: "11.1111/11111"
date-released: 2024-12-31
license: MIT
url: "https://github.com/your_repo"
preferred-citation:
    type: article
    authors:
    - family-names: "Doe"
      given-names: "Jane"
      orcid: "https://orcid.org/9999-9999-9999-9999"
    doi: "11.1111/11111"
    journal: "The title of the journal"
    month: 12
    start: 19 # the first page number
    end: 29 #the last page number
    title: "Name of your submitted paper"
    issue: 9
    volume: 2
    year: 2024

On GitHub, it will show in either APA or BibTeX formatting, as they are the currently supported formats. If you add a CITATION.cff file to your repository, then a label for citing will automatically be generated and will show up on the right sidebar of the repository.

APA

Doe, J. (2024). Name of your software (Version 1.0.1) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/11.1111/11111

BibTeX

@software{Joe_Name_of_your_software_2024, author = {Doe, Jane}, doi = {11.1111/11111}, month = {12}, title = {{Name of your software}}, url = {https://github.com/your_repo}, version = {1.0.1}, year = {2024} }

This is an example of software citation.

Further reading