The Citation File Format: Growing up to enable better software citation

Abstract

In 2018, we presented the Citation File Format (CFF) at the 3rd RSE Conference (doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.7053698.v1) as a machine- and human-readable file format to provide citation information for software, so that RSEs could get credit for their work. The idea was that RSEs provide such a CITATION.cff file in their source code repository, so that others can use the metadata it contains to cite software correctly.

In 2022, this idea hasn't changed, but the Citation File Format has - specifically in terms of userbase, its support in academic and software infrastructure, and the landscape of dedicated tools. There are now around 8,000 CITATION.cff files on GitHub alone, as compared to around 500 in 2018. Furthermore, CFF has been integrated into GitHub itself to present citation information for repositories, as well as in the open access publication platform Zenodo, and the reference managers Zotero and JabRef. This means that the format now supports the complete software citation workflow, from provision to consumption of software citation metadata.

Additionally, the format has been updated to a new version, including many improvements in the schema itself and its documentation. And the tooling ecosystem has grown to support users better in the creation, editing, validation and conversion of CFF files.

In this talk, I will give an overview of CFF, its new integrations and tools, changes and improvements in the format itself, how the project addresses challenges that come with this kind of growth, and some insights into how CFF files are actually used in the wild.