Journal article
How is R cited in research outputs? Structure, impacts, and citation standard
Journal of informetrics, v 11(4), pp 989-1002
Nov 2017
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
•R and its packages are having strong impacts in PLoS database.•R and its packages are cited in these papers in a fairly consistent way.•Complex structure of software should be considered by software citation standard.
This paper addresses software citation by analyzing how R and its packages are cited in a sample of PLoS papers. A codebook is developed to support a content analysis of the full-text papers. Our results indicate that the software R and its packages are inconsistently cited, as is the case with other scientific software. The inconsistency derives partly from the variety of citation standards currently used for software, and partly from fact that these standards are not well followed by authors on multiple levels. This work sheds light on the future development of software citation standards, especially given the present landscape of conflicting citation practices. Moreover, our approach furnishes a possible blueprint for dealing with the granularity of software entities in scientific citation: we consider citations of the core R software environment, of specific R packages, and of individual functions.
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Details
- Title
- How is R cited in research outputs? Structure, impacts, and citation standard
- Creators
- Kai LiErjia YanYuanyuan Feng
- Publication Details
- Journal of informetrics, v 11(4), pp 989-1002
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Information Science
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000418020600005
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85029819864
- Other Identifier
- 991014976820904721
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InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
- Information Science & Library Science