1.4 Citation

Why should we cite the used software at all? If you just asked yourself this question this guide kindly recommends reading the following article:

Kreutzer, S., Burow, C., Dietze, M. Fuchs, M.C., Fischer, M., Schmidt, C., 2017. Software in the context of luminescence dating: status, concepts and suggestions exemplified by the R package Luminescence. Ancient TL 35(2), 1-11. URL

1.4.1 Citing the package

Base R already provides a function to facilitate easy citation of packages. The function citation() generally only requires the argument package,1 which must be a character string with the name of the package. The function autmatically creates a citation for the package itself and, if provided by the package authors, also lists all additional articles related to the package.

citation(package = "Luminescence")
## 
## To cite the R package 'Luminescence' please use the first two
## entries, and apply the rest if applicable:
## 
##   Sebastian Kreutzer, Christoph Burow, Michael Dietze, Margret C.
##   Fuchs, Christoph Schmidt, Manfred Fischer and Johannes Friedrich
##   (2018). Luminescence: Comprehensive Luminescence Dating Data
##   Analysis. R package version 0.8.1.
##   https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=Luminescence
## 
## Kreutzer S, Schmidt C, Fuchs MC, Dietze M, Fischer M and Fuchs M
## (2012). "Introducing an R package for luminescence dating
## analysis." _Ancient TL_, *30*(1), pp. 1-8.
## 
## Dietze M, Kreutzer S, Fuchs MC, Burow C, Fischer M and Schmidt C
## (2013). "A practical guide to the R package Luminescence."
## _Ancient TL_, *31*(1), pp. 11-18.
## 
## Fuchs MC, Kreutzer S, Burow C, Dietze M, Fischer M, Schmidt C and
## Fuchs M (2015). "Data processing in luminescence dating analysis:
## An exemplary workflow using the R package 'Luminescence'."
## _Quaternary International_, *362*, pp. 8-13. doi:
## 10.1016/j.quaint.2014.06.034 (URL:
## http://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.06.034).
## 
## Smedley RK (2015). "A new R function for the Internal External
## Uncertainty (IEU) model." _Ancient TL_, *33*(1), pp. 16-21.
## 
## Dietze M, Kreutzer S, Burow C, Fuchs MC, Fischer M and Schmidt C
## (2016). "The abanico plot: visualising chronometric data with
## individual standard errors." _Quaternary Geochronology_, *31*, pp.
## 12-18. doi: 10.1016/j.quageo.2015.09.003 (URL:
## http://doi.org/10.1016/j.quageo.2015.09.003).
## 
## Mercier N, Kreutzer S, Christophe C, Guerin G, Guibert P, Lahaye
## C, Lanos P, Philippe A and Tribolo C (2016). "Bayesian statistics
## in luminescence dating: The baSAR-model and its implementation in
## the R package 'Luminescence'." _Ancient TL_, *34*(2), pp. 14-21.
## 
## Kreutzer S, Burow C, Dietze M, Fuchs MC, Fischer M and Schmidt C
## (2017). "Software in the context of luminescence dating: status,
## concepts and suggestions exemplified by the R package
## 'Luminescence'." _Ancient TL_, *35*(2), pp. 1-11.
## 
## To see these entries in BibTeX format, use 'print(<citation>,
## bibtex=TRUE)', 'toBibtex(.)', or set
## 'options(citation.bibtex.max=999)'.

For the Luminescence package the first entry should be used to cite the package itself, at best in conjunction with the Kreutzer et al. (2012) article. All other articles usually refer to a specific function of a package and should only be cited if that function was explicitly used.

For the tech-savvy the citation list can also be printed with BibTeX markup:

citations <- citation(package = "Luminescence")
toBibtex(citations)
## @Manual{,
##   title = {Luminescence: Comprehensive Luminescence Dating Data Analysis},
##   author = {Sebastian Kreutzer and Christoph Burow and Michael Dietze and Margret C. Fuchs and Christoph Schmidt and Manfred Fischer and Johannes Friedrich},
##   year = {2018},
##   note = {R package version 0.8.1},
##   url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=Luminescence},
## }
## 
## @Article{,
##   title = {Introducing an R package for luminescence dating analysis},
##   author = {Sebastian Kreutzer and Christoph Schmidt and Margret C. Fuchs and Michael Dietze and Manfred Fischer and Markus Fuchs},
##   year = {2012},
##   journal = {Ancient TL},
##   volume = {30},
##   number = {1},
##   pages = {1-8},
## }
## 
## @Article{,
##   title = {A practical guide to the R package Luminescence},
##   author = {Michael Dietze and Sebastian Kreutzer and Margret C. Fuchs and Christoph Burow and Manfred Fischer and Christoph Schmidt},
##   year = {2013},
##   journal = {Ancient TL},
##   volume = {31},
##   number = {1},
##   pages = {11-18},
## }
## 
## @Article{,
##   title = {Data processing in luminescence dating analysis: An exemplary workflow using the R package 'Luminescence'},
##   author = {Margret C. Fuchs and Sebastian Kreutzer and Christoph Burow and Michael Dietze and Manfred Fischer and Christoph Schmidt and Markus Fuchs},
##   year = {2015},
##   journal = {Quaternary International},
##   volume = {362},
##   pages = {8-13},
##   doi = {10.1016/j.quaint.2014.06.034},
## }
## 
## @Article{,
##   title = {A new R function for the Internal External Uncertainty (IEU) model},
##   author = {Rachel K Smedley},
##   journal = {Ancient TL},
##   year = {2015},
##   volume = {33},
##   number = {1},
##   pages = {16-21},
## }
## 
## @Article{,
##   title = {The abanico plot: visualising chronometric data with individual standard errors},
##   author = {Michael Dietze and Sebastian Kreutzer and Christoph Burow and Margret C. Fuchs and Manfred Fischer and Christoph Schmidt},
##   year = {2016},
##   journal = {Quaternary Geochronology},
##   volume = {31},
##   pages = {12-18},
##   doi = {10.1016/j.quageo.2015.09.003},
## }
## 
## @Article{,
##   title = {Bayesian statistics in luminescence dating: The baSAR-model and its implementation in the R package 'Luminescence'},
##   author = {Norbert Mercier and Sebastian Kreutzer and Claire Christophe and Guillaume Guerin and Pierre Guibert and Christelle Lahaye and Philippe Lanos and Anne Philippe and Chantal Tribolo},
##   year = {2016},
##   journal = {Ancient TL},
##   volume = {34},
##   number = {2},
##   pages = {14-21},
## }
## 
## @Article{,
##   title = {Software in the context of luminescence dating: status, concepts and suggestions exemplified by the R package 'Luminescence'},
##   author = {Sebastian Kreutzer and Christoph Burow and Michael Dietze and Margret C. Fuchs and Manfred Fischer and Christoph Schmidt},
##   year = {2017},
##   journal = {Ancient TL},
##   volume = {35},
##   number = {2},
##   pages = {1-11},
## }

1.4.2 Citing a specific function

Sometimes it might also be a good idea to cite a specific function. To facilitate this each help file in the Luminescence package (v0.7.0) includes a citation section.

So if you e.g. decided to make heavy use of the Kars et al. (2008) model using the calc_Kars2008() function, then open its help file via ?calc_Kars2008, scroll all the way down to the “How to cite”-section and copy-paste the text.

As an example, this is how the citation for this function looks like:

King, G., Burow, C. (2017). calc_Kars2008(): Apply the Kars et al. (2008) model. Function version 0.1.0. In: Kreutzer, S., Dietze, M., Burow, C., Fuchs, M.C., Schmidt, C., Fischer, M., Friedrich, J. (2017). Luminescence: Comprehensive Luminescence Dating Data Analysis. R package version 0.7.5. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=Luminescence

Note that these entries are automatically generated when the R package is published, thus they should always be up to date (at least in theory…).

  1. Actually, it can also be called empty, which then provides the citation for R itself↩