FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group

The FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group (SCWG) was a cross-team committee convened under the FORCE11 community — a movement of scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders working to improve knowledge creation and sharing through information technology. Established in April 2015, the group brought together perspectives from a variety of existing initiatives working on software citation in order to produce a consolidated set of citation principles and encourage broad adoption of a consistent policy for software citation across disciplines and venues. The group's mission was deliberately scoped: it would review existing efforts, make a set of recommendations, and produce principles illustrated with working examples, together with a plan for dissemination and distribution. It explicitly did not aim to produce detailed implementation specifications, although it could review and discuss possible technical solutions. The recommendations were to be put forward for endorsement by the organizations represented in the group and by others playing an important role in the community. The working group was co-chaired by Arfon Smith, Daniel S. Katz and Kyle Niemeyer. It operated openly within FORCE11: any FORCE11 member with an interest could join by subscribing to the group page, which added them to the mailing list, and by adding themselves to the members table in the group's GitHub repository. The group maintained a public email address, softwarecitationwg@force11.org, for its members. The group's principal output, the Software Citation Principles, was published in 2016, with formal recommendations presented at FORCE11 2016 in February of that year. The principles became a widely referenced foundation for how software should be treated as a citable research object, influencing publishers, repositories, funders and researchers. Having completed its work, the Software Citation Working Group was archived. Its mission was carried forward by a successor body, the Software Citation Implementation Working Group, which took on the task of implementing the principles the SCWG had developed. The group's page on the FORCE11 website remains as an archived record of its mission statement, timeline, co-chairs and outputs.

The FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group emerged from the FORCE11 community, which itself grew out of the FORC Workshop held in Dagstuhl, Germany, in August 2011 — the source of the "11" in the name. FORCE11 describes itself as a community of scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders that arose organically to facilitate the change toward improved knowledge creation and sharing, aiming to bring about change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology. Its founding assumption is that semantically enhanced, media-rich digital publishing will be more powerful than traditional print media or electronic copies of printed works, and that scholarly communication should broaden to include, for example, the publication of software tools. Within that context, the Software Citation Working Group was established in April 2015 as a cross-team committee. Its stated mission was to leverage the perspectives of a variety of existing initiatives working on software citation in order to produce a consolidated set of citation principles, encouraging broad adoption of a consistent policy for software citation across disciplines and venues. The group was to review existing efforts and make recommendations, which would then be put forward for endorsement by the organizations represented in the group and others important to the community. Its deliverables were a set of principles illustrated with working examples, plus a plan for dissemination and distribution. The group explicitly did not set out to produce detailed implementation specifications, though it could review and discuss possible technical solutions. The group was co-chaired by Arfon Smith, Daniel S. Katz and Kyle Niemeyer. It operated as an open FORCE11 group: any FORCE11 member interested in contributing could join by signing in to FORCE11 and subscribing on the group page, which automatically added them to the mailing list, and by adding themselves to the members table in the group's GitHub repository (force11/force11-scwg) via a pull request. The group maintained the email address softwarecitationwg@force11.org for member communication. According to the group's published timeline, the working group was established in April 2015, and formal recommendations were presented at FORCE11 2016 in February 2016. The Software Citation Principles were published in 2016. The principles addressed how software should be cited as a research object, a topic of growing importance as software became a central component of research across disciplines. After completing its work, the group was archived on the FORCE11 website. FORCE11 notes that the group has finished its work and that a new Software Citation Implementation Working Group has started to implement the principles developed by the SCWG. The archived page preserves the group's mission statement, timeline, co-chairs and links to its GitHub repository, serving as a record of the initiative that established the Software Citation Principles.

• 2016

  Formal recommendations presented at FORCE11 2016.

• 2016

  Software Citation Principles published.

• 2015

  Software Citation Working Group established within FORCE11.

• 2011

  FORC Workshop held in Dagstuhl, Germany — the origin of the FORCE11 community and the "11" in its name.

• Working group archived after completing its work; Software Citation Implementation Working Group launched to implement the principles.

A cross-team FORCE11 committee producing consolidated, discipline-neutral software citation principles for broad community endorsement.

• Software Citation Principles (2016)

  A consolidated set of citation principles for research software, illustrated with working examples, produced for broad endorsement across disciplines and venues.

• Recommendations and dissemination plan

  Formal recommendations presented at FORCE11 2016, together with a plan for dissemination and distribution.

1. 1Software Citation Working Group – FORCE11force11.org
2. 2About FORCE11 – FORCE11force11.org
3. 3Membership – FORCE11force11.org
4. 4FSCI — FORCE11 Scholarly Communication Institute – FORCE11force11.org
5. 5FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group – Wikidatawikidata.org