What RSEs should know about software citation

Presentation given at 25th HiRSE Seminar on 2024-02-13.

As RSEs, we create and maintain the software that enables research across domains. While guidelines, policies, funding lines and good practices around research software are emerging, we still find it hard to accumulate academic credit for our software work. One solution to this issue is the establishment of a practice of software citation that bootstraps the existing citation system. But how does this work, in theory and in practice? In this talk, I introduce the citation problems that software faces and the basic principles of software citation. The talk will also outline what steps we can take as RSEs to get credit for our work, and enable better research (software) practice more generally.