How to reference digital objects you create

Recommendation for a structured approach to citing digitial objects in papers

When writing a paper, a structured approach to citing your research compendium is useful as it creates a coherent approach among the discipline.

Visual

Building on the visual seen earlier of the 4 objects of the resarch process, Figure 1 shows how each can be cited.

Figure 1: Citing research objects

How to cite each in your paper

Inspired by the FAIR research code approach, we recommend including references to the digital byproducts made available alongside the research in the following manner at the end of your paper.

Add two headers just after the conclusion and before the references section:

Data

Cite the input data used in the data section of the paper

….. other sections

… conclusion of the paper

Data availability

Rererence the output datasets created as part of the research.

Code availability

Reference the research compendium (the archived version ideally, but the active GitHub link works too if no archive was made).

References

… rest of the references

Using proper citation style throughout the paper ensures that the bibliography has the full set of references. The standard structure (while not absolutely necessary as footnotes or other approaches also work) helps ensure that researchers in the discipline follow a standard approach.