Plugin Citations and Mentions
Developers are strongly urged to complete the CITATION.cff file for their plugin, even for existing plugins. An ORCID ID is not required but it is highly recommended to complete this file:
- Go to your plugin directory on GitHub.
- Click the
Add filebutton on the top right of the directory window. - Choose
Create new filefrom the dropdown. - On the next screen that appears, enter
CITATION.cffwhere it saysName your file .... A blue bar appears across the top of the new file window. - Click the
Insert examplebutton on the blue bar to get the template for the file.
Note: Do not enclose anything in quotation marks except the contents of the message field and the title field. - Enter the correct data in the fields provided.
- Scroll down, add a description (optional), and save the file.
Here is another example of CITATION.cff. We use CITATION.cff to compile the list of plugins we gather statistics about. We pull a list of only those plugins that have this information completed. That list of plugins is used to gather citation statistics which are displayed on the plugin documentation page in the Citations tab, as explained below.
The Citation tab on the plugin page provides citation reference data for the plugin. We urge you to cite the plugin (and napari!) in any published information that you produce. The napari citation looks like this:
napari contributors (2019). napari: a multi-dimensional image viewer for python.
doi:10.5281/zenodo.3555620
Note: This DOI will resolve to all versions of napari. To cite a specific version please find the DOI of that version on our zenodo page.
Citation statistics are based on what we find in OpenAlex. This is the simplified process:
- A list of all plugins that have the
CITATION.cfffile in their metadata on GitHub is retrieved. - The DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) in the
CITATION.cffare translated to OpenAlex ids. - A list of papers that cited our plugins is created. For the sake of illustration let's call it Cited Plugins.
- Locate the 5 papers in Cited Plugins that cited the plugin most recently.
- Locate the 5 papers in Cited Plugins that were cited the most times by other publications.
Once we have this information, we present it on the Citations tab for each plugin.
The heading or title section of the tab contains the name of the plugin and a brief overview, as shown below. The citation is available in different formats, including APA, BibTex, and RIS.
The next section has three sub-sections: Top Citations, Most Recent Citations, and Top Fields Citing this Plugin.
It displays up to three papers that have cited the plugin. There is a citation and abstract of the plugin. These papers are the ones that have the most citations from other papers. Notice that the graphic shows three papers that have been cited by other papers 140, 39, and 17 times respectively. The plugin has been formally cited 23 times but these three highlighted papers were cited by other papers 140, 39, and 17 times. Here is an illustration:
The screenshot shows the papers that have cited the napari plugin most recently at 3 weeks ago, 2 months ago, and 2 months ago.
Notice that there is a link to access all the citations at the bottom of this section.
This section looks like this:
The top fields citing this plugin are determined by an algorithm that is still being developed.
Developers are urged to fill in the CITATION.cff file on GitHub for their plugins. We pull a list of only those plugins that have this information completed to do our citation research.