Fw: [R] R Citation

[Achim Zeileis]

On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 17:48:39 -0500 Steve McIntyre wrote:

> Dear Achim, Thanks for the comment. Here is the publisher's style
> guideline(AGU)
> "Because the Internet is dynamic environment and sites may change or
> move, treat World Wide Web, ftp files, and electronically archived
> data stored at data centers other than World or National Data Centers
> as unpublished, i.e., in text only."
> http://www.agu.org/pubs/AuthorRefSheet.pdf

My understanding of this is that you cannot refer to files (especially
documents and data files) in the references. A software package is
neither. So maybe you should just remove the URL?
For proprietary software packages, you don't have a URL from which you
can download it, but nevertheless you should cite the software you used
in an article.

In short: The text above does not provide a guideline on how to cite
software (afaics), and thus it does not apply to citing R or R packages.

my EUR 0.02
Z

> So by this policy, R and its packages cannot be included in the list
> of references and has the same citation as a pers.comm. The problem
> for my paper can be resolved by removing the citation from references
> to text, but this seems unfair to R and the package authors for AGU
> publications. AGU does recognize some permanent data archives listed
> here http://www.agu.org/pubs/datacent.html - maybe it would make sense
> to have a mirror at one of these permanent archives for packages and
> versions.
> 
> Regards, Steve McIntyre
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> 
> From: "Achim Zeileis" <Achim.Zeileis at wu-wien.ac.at>
> To: "Steve McIntyre" <stephen.mcintyre at utoronto.ca>
> Cc: <R-help at r-project.org>
> Sent: Friday, January 21, 2005 5:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [R] R Citation
> 
> 
> > On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 16:42:41 -0500 Steve McIntyre wrote:
> >
> > > I've cited R in an article accepted by a journal using the
> > > following reference:
> > >
> > > >R Development Core Team (2004), R: A language and environment for
> > >  >statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing,
> > >  >Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-00-3, <http://www.Rproject.org>.
> >                                   ^^^^^             ^^^^
> >
> > The ISBN is 3-900051-07-0 and the URL http://www.R-project.org/.
> >
> > > I received the following query about my citation.
> > >
> > >  > 7. For R Development Core Team [2004], you provided both an
> > >  > ISBN and a
> > > > Web site address.  If this is a book, please provide the name
> > > > and location of the publisher.  If you do not have print
> > > > publication information, the Web site will be cited in text
> > > > only, and the reference will be removed from the reference list.
> > >
> > > I'd appreciate advice on this. I had a similar query about a
> > > similar citation of an R package.
> >
> > Well, both R and the package are software and no books, so print
> > publication information cannot be available. You could either argue
> > that you want to cite software and that the information is complete,
> > or (if the publisher of the journal would not accept that) argue
> > that both are manuals which you want to cite (for which the
> > publisher should have a citation style).
> > One would hope that the latter is not necessary as a publisher
> > should always allow a possibility to properly cite software used in
> > a scientific article...
> >
> > hth,
> > Z
> >
> > > Thanks, Steve McIntyre
> > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> > >
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> > >
> 
>