# How to cite Julia packages for academic purpose?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [April 27, 2022, 11:15am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124 "2022-04-27T11:15:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 9\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Line](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b38774/32.png) [@Line](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Line)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2022, 11:15am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124/1 "2022-04-27T11:15:41Z")

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Hi, does anyone know:  
How to cite Julia packages as part of a paper, master thesis or other academic purposes?

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**Author:** ![nilshg](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/nilshg/32/2283_2.png) [@nilshg](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nilshg)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2022, 11:29am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124/2 "2022-04-27T11:29:17Z")

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Related:

> [@How to cite Julia in publications?](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-in-publications/23060/12):
>
> Some packages use Zenodo for this. It’s been added recently to [GLM](https://github.com/JuliaStats/StatsFuns.jl/issues/46#issuecomment-531900899), so you could file an issue to enable it for MixedModels too.

and on a specific package/ecosystem:

> [@Julia, JuMP, and Gurobi what MUST be cited?](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-jump-and-gurobi-what-must-be-cited/31672):
>
> Sorry if this is not the right place, but community seems to be the category that better fit this question. I am sending a conference paper that has a very strict page limit, they are 10 pages including the references. I have cited about five papers on my subject, and three more because of Julia, JuMP, and Gurobi. The citing format is kind space-wasting and if I removed the three citations I could avoid removing one or two paragraphs. My question is, what must be cited? I have no problem citing…

and

> [@Allowing a package to be cited](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/allowing-a-package-to-be-cited/73522):
>
> Any thoughts here on what are currently the best options to allow people to cite a package that you have created? I know of Zenodo Pros Easy and also stores the code. Cons Is mostly ignored by Google Scholar. Preprint repository such as arXiv Pros Reasonably easy Cons Need to write a LaTeX document LaTeX, HTML or PDF document. Peer-reviewed publication Pros Looks nice Cons Takes long Book Obvious pro’s and con’s. I mention this because, for example, ggplot2 does this. EDIT: R…

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**Author:** ![stevengj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stevengj/32/71_2.png) [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2022, 11:37am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124/3 "2022-04-27T11:37:41Z")

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If the package has a `CITATION.bib` file, you can use whatever that recommends. Otherwise you can always cite the URL, for example:

```julia
@misc{quadgk,
  title = {{QuadGK.jl}: {G}auss--{K}ronrod integration in {J}ulia},
  author = {Steven G. Johnson},
  year = {2013},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/JuliaMath/QuadGK.jl}}
}

```

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**Author:** ![Line](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b38774/32.png) [@Line](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Line)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2022, 11:46am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124/4 "2022-04-27T11:46:10Z")

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Thanks! Ok, so let`s say I want to cite the Itertools package, I can use this link: [https://github.com/JuliaCollections/IterTools.jl](https://github.com/JuliaCollections/IterTools.jl). But who are the authors, is it every contributor?

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**Author:** ![stevengj](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/stevengj/32/71_2.png) [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2022, 1:29pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124/5 "2022-04-27T13:29:28Z")

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> [@Line](#):
>
> But who are the authors, is it every contributor?

In cases where there isn’t a clearly dominant author/contributor, you could list the author as “Various authors” or maybe list the top 2-3 contributors and then put “et al.” or similar, e.g. `author = {Eric Davies and Daniel C. Jones and {others}}` for IterTools.jl.

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**Author:** ![simeonschaub](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/simeonschaub/32/216566_2.png) [@simeonschaub](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/simeonschaub)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2022, 2:18pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124/6 "2022-04-27T14:18:53Z")

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I usually look in the license text, so here it would be “Daniel Jones, Stefan Karpinski, Simon Kornblith, Kevin Squire, Jeff Bezanson, Tim Holy, Jonathan Malmaud, Eric Davies, and other contributors”

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**Author:** ![Line](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b38774/32.png) [@Line](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Line)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2022, 2:30pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124/7 "2022-04-27T14:30:36Z")

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Thanks!

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**Author:** ![Henrique\_Becker](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/henrique_becker/32/15443_2.png) [@Henrique\_Becker](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Henrique_Becker)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2022, 2:48pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124/8 "2022-04-27T14:48:42Z")

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On the other side, package authors that want their packages cited could be using Zenodo (that integrates with GitHub) to automatically generate a DOI number and a GitHub badge with it after each release. It would make things better.

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**Author:** ![Line](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b38774/32.png) [@Line](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Line)\
**Post date:** [April 28, 2022, 10:20am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-to-cite-julia-packages-for-academic-purpose/80124/9 "2022-04-28T10:20:32Z")

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True and a good suggestion. It is definitely room for making it easier to cite packages and in my opinion, it is important to make it easier to cite software as it is becoming a larger part of our work and this should be acknowledged.