Software has become an essential part of research activities. Often, research software also embeds research knowledge and new methods, and is an important research output itself. Where software is used during the research process, it should be cited in the same way as other types of work that the research builds on. Where software is created during the research process or for a research purpose, it should be made citable. Software citation makes it possible to understand exactly what software has been used in research and thus helps make the research reproducible. Software citation also makes it possible for the creators of research software to receive credit for their software work. In this webinar, I provide a practical introduction to making your own software citable for others, and to citing the software that you have used in your research.

Building on an introduction to the principles of software citation, the first part of the webinar presents practical steps for developers and maintainers for making their software citable. It introduces approaches to defining software authorship, shows how to record, present, publish and maintain citation metadata, and introduces tools that can help with these processes.

The second part of the webinar introduces practical steps for citing software. It discusses finding the relevant metadata, dealing with missing metadata, and shows tools that can support software citation workflows.

Presenter

• Stephan Druskat (German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Software Technology)

Presenter Bio

Stephan is a (research) software engineering researcher at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin, Germany, and a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow. After receiving his M.A. in English Philology, Modern German Literature and Linguistics, he worked as a Research Software Engineer in different linguistic research projects before joining DLR to investigate research software more generally. Stephan’s main research interests are research software engineering and sustainability, empirical software engineering and software intelligence. He leads the Citation File Format and HERMES projects.