[R] citing a package?

[Jari Oksanen]

On Mon, 2004-02-09 at 16:21, Martin Henry H. Stevens wrote:
> How do I cite a package (not R itself - I know how to do that)? Any 
> thoughts or links?
> Many thanks in advance?

I think it is the duty of a package author to write a citable paper, if
he thinks that such is needed. It could be useful to have this kind of
information easily available in the package, so that you do not have to
ask the authors how to cite their package. A natural looking place for
this kind of information is the package DESCRIPTION. However, there is
no standard entry for citation there. Now it seems that some packages
have a hint to citing (for instance, MASS: "Functions and datasets to
support Venables and Ripley, 'Modern Applied Statistics with S' (4th
edition)"), while some book-backed packages have no pointers to the book
(nlme, for instance). However, all CRAN packages have a pdf file of the
package documentation in CRAN. If citing URL is allowed in the journal,
this is a place to point.

cheers, jari oksanen 
-- 
J.Oksanen, Oulu, Finland.
"Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could
only have originated in California." E. Dijkstra