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What Is Work on Software Publishing and Citation?

Peer-reviewed papers are the "gold standard" for credit and recognition of research contributions in an academic setting. Employers and research sponsors typically value technical papers, as well as citation rates within the commuity as measures of productivity and impact, thus incentivizing researchers to focus on them. An important part of efforts to produce better scientific software is to push such organizations to recognize software contributions so that researchers who are making contributions in this way can be appropriately recognized and rewarded. Fundamental to this is the ability to treat software as a publishable artifact and have it cited appropriately in the technical literature. At the same time, making more directly software visible in searches of scientific literature will help potential users discover software they may benefit from using. As a community, we are still experimenting with various methods of citing software while trying to keep up with the rapidly accelerating scale, pace, and visibility of scientific software development.

Published May 17, 2017

Contributors David Bernholdt and Dan Ibanez

Another challenge faced by those interested in producing better scientific software is finding communities in which to talk about the software development experience as opposed to the scientific methodology and results. Therefore, journals as well as conferences and workshops that focus on aspects of the CSE software development experience are also very useful in terms of simultaneously being able to share these experiences with others and get publications in the process.

This topic provides pointers to venues that support publishing of software artifacts, and organizations developing and promoting principles for the appropriate citation of software. It also includes recurring conference and workshop series and journals that focus on the software development experience. There are also many cases where more general conferences will include specific focused events related to software development experiences, which you can find (or submit to) the Events section of the site.