Citation

Last updated on 2025-05-22 | Edit this page

Overview

Questions

  • How do I create a digital object identifier (DOI)?
  • How can I make my work easy to cite?

Objectives

  • Learn how to create a digital object identifier (DOI).
  • Make your work easy to cite.

All USGS Software Information Products are required to have a digital object identifier (DOI) assigned to them. A DOI is persistent identifier tied to a unique object that you specify. USGS uses the Asset Identifier Service to reserve and manage DOIs for software products. You can reserve a DOI by providing the Title of your Software Product and the USGS Science Center or Program responsible for the software project. Remember not to activate/publish the DOI to DataCite until you have received official approval to release the software product. You will learn more about activating/publishing the DOI in a later episode.

Once you have the DOI, you can write a suggested citation by including the reserved DOI that you receive from the Asset Identifier Service in your citation as a full URL (e.g., https://doi.org/10.5066/xxxxxxxx). For example:

Dracula, V. and Wolfman, L.T., 2024, Vampires and Werewolves, version 1.0.0: U.S. Geological Survey software release, https://doi.org/10.5066/xxxxxxxx.

You can place the suggested citation in the README.md file in your root directory, making it easy to find.

Try adding a CITATION.md file

Although not required for a USGS Software Information Product, you may want to consider adding a CITATION.md file that describes how to reference or cite your project. You can include a plain text version of the citation that’s easy to copy and paste as well as a BibTex entry.

Here’s an example of what Dracula would write in his CITATION.md file:


To reference the Vampire and Werewolves software product in a publication, you can cite:

Dracula, V. and Wolfman, L.T., 2024, Vampires and Werewolves, version 1.0.0, U.S. Geological Survey software release, https://doi.org/10.5066/xxxxxxxx.

@software{dracula-vampires-werewolves-2024,
  author      = {Dracula, Vlad AND Wolfman, L.T.},
  title       = {Vampire and Werewolves},
  version     = {1.0.0},
  year        = {2024},
  doi         = {10.5066/xxxxxxxx}
}

The second part of that documentation is a Bibtex entry, which can be ingested by some bibliography software. If there is an associated publication, you can add that to CITATION.md too.

To explore this topic in more detail, check out the Software Sustainability Institute blog or the FORCE11 Software Citation Group’s citation principles.

Key Points

  • Create a DOI for your software information product.
  • Add a suggested citation to your repository.