[R] citing a package?

[Martin Henry H. Stevens]

Thank you to all the contributors to my original post. It has been 
informative to me, and appears to have provoked a small but important 
discussion about how we perform our duties in our various capacities as 
creators, developers and users.
I like Thomas' suggestion,
> eg,
> Lumley T (2003) Rmeta version 2.10. R package. 
> http://cran.r-project.org
in addition to citing papers or books that discuss details of use, 
e.g., citing Venalbles and Ripley (2002) Modern Applied Statistics with 
S, for the MASS package.

Thanks again,
Hank Stevens

On Feb 9, 2004, at 11:08 AM, Thomas Lumley wrote:

> On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Ramon Diaz-Uriarte wrote:
>
>> Dear Martin,
>>
>> I'd suggest you check the "DESCRIPTION" file and ask the author(s) of 
>> the
>> package (e.g., a package might be related to a tech report which 
>> might, now,
>> be in press, or whatever).
>>
>
> The posted suggestions seem to be that you don't cite the package, you
> cite something else vaguely related to it instead.  This violates both 
> the
> purpose of a citation (a link to the original source) and the principle
> (which I hope R users support) that software is publishable in itself, 
> not
> just as an appendage to text.
>
> Most citation styles give rules for citing software and rules for 
> citing
> URIs.  Even when the package author has been completely unhelpful in
> constructing a package title you can still put together a perfectly
> reasonable citation, eg,
>
> Lumley T (2003) Rmeta version 2.10. R package. 
> http://cran.r-project.org
>
> Some publishers might want a download date, or an explicit statement 
> that
> it is software (eg to make searching easier).
>
> 	-thomas
>
>
Dr. Martin Henry H. Stevens, Assistant Professor
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Botany Department
Miami University
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