[Python-Dev] Official citation for Python (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull turnbull.stephen.fw at u.tsukuba.ac.jp
Wed Sep 12 23:59:44 EDT 2018

Chris Barker via Python-Dev writes:

But "I wrote some code in Python to produce these statistics" -- does that need a citation?

That depends on what you mean by "statistics" and whether (as one should) one makes the code available. If the code is published or "available on request", definitely, Python should be cited. If not, and by "statistics" you mean the kind of things provided by Steven d'Aprano's excellent statistics module (mean, median, standard deviation, etc), maybe no citation is needed. But anything more esoteric than that (even linear regression), yeah, I would say you should cite both Python and any reference you used to learn the algorithm or formulas, in the context of mentioning that your statistics are home-brew, not produced by one of the recognized applications for doing so.

If so, maybe that would take a different form.

Yes, it would. But not so different: eg, version is analogous to edition when citing a book.

Anyway, hard to make this decision without some idea how the citation is intended to be used.

Same as any other citation, (1) to give credit to those responsible for providing a resource (this is why publishers and their metadata of city are still conventionally included), and (2) to show where that resource can be obtained. AFAICS, both motivations are universally applicable in polite society. NB: Replication is an important reason for wanting to acquire the resource, but it's not the only one.

I think underlying your comment is the question of what resource is being cited. I can think of three offhand that might be characterized as "Python". First, the PSF, as a provider of funding. There is a conventional form for this: a footnote on the title or author's name saying "The author acknowledges [a] grant [grant identifier if available] from the Python Software Foundation." I usually orally mention them in presentations, too. That one's easy; everybody should always do that.

The rest of these, sort of an ideal to strive for. If you keep a bibliographic database, and there are now quite a few efforts to crowd source them, it's easier to go the whole 9 yards than to skimp. But except in cases where we don't need to even mention the code, probably we should be citing, for reasons of courtesy to readers as well as authors, editors, and publishers (as disgusting as many publishers are as members of society, they do play a role in providing many resources ---we should find ways to compete them into good behavior, not ostracize them).

The second is the Python language and standard library. Then the Language Reference and/or the Library Reference should be cited briefly when Python is first mentioned, and in the text introducing a program or program fragment, with a full citation in the bibliography. I tentatively suggest that the metadata for the Language Reference would be

Author: principal author(s) (Guido?) et al. OR python.org OR
    Python Contributors
Title: The Python Language Reference
Version: to match Python version used (if relevant, different
    versions each get full citations), probably should not be
    "current"
Publisher: Python Software Foundation
Date: of the relevant version
Location: City of legal address of PSF
URL: to version used (probably should not be the default)
Date accessed: if "current" was used

The Library reference would be the same except for Title.

The third is a particular implementation. In that case the metadata would be

Author: principal author(s) (Guido) et al. OR python.org OR
    Python Contributors
Title: The cPython Python distribution
Python Version: as appropriate (if relevant, different versions each
    get full citations), never "current"
Distributor Version: if different from Python version (eg, additional
    Debian cruft)
Publisher: Distributor (eg, PSF, Debian Project, Anaconda Inc.)
Date: of the relevant version
Location: City of legal address of distributor

If downloaded:

URL: to version used (including git commit SHA1 if available)
Date accessed: download from distributor, not installation date

If received on physical medium: use the "usual" form of citation for a collection of individual works (even if Python was the only thing on it). Probably the only additional information needed would be the distributor as editor of the collection and the name of the collection.

In most cases I can think of, if the implementation is cited, the Language and Library References should be cited, too.

Finally, if Python or components were modified for the project, the modified version should be preserved in a repository and a VCS identifier provided. This does not imply the repository need be publicly accessible, of course, although it might be for other reasons (eg, in a GSoC project,wherever or if hosted for free on GitHub).

I doubt that "URNs" like DOI and ISBN are applicable, but if available they should be included in all cases as well.

Steve

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