How to cite software in LaTeX

bibtexlatex

I'm currently writing a 15 ECTS (quarter years worth) report as a part of my two-year masters in computer science, and I'm using LaTeX with BibTeX.

In my report I use and "talk about" different pieces of software. As we know software can change when time goes on, I believe I need to be able to quote a specific version of these pieces of software.

I've read mailinglists suggestion to use "@misc" with Author, Howpublished, Lastchecked, Title and Url. Somehow that feels a bit crude, and since new "@things" have been created for example website references maybe something exists for software as well?

How do I do this the best way?

Best Answer

This is driven by the format of the citation required by the institution or journal.

For example, the APA has guidelines for computer software references and, if these are to be followed, then the output from LaTeX needs to produce the appropriate format. An example they give (reference entry 92 for computer software) is

Miller, M. E. (1993). The Interactive Tester (Version 4.0) [Computer software]. Westminster, CA: Psytek Services.

but there are a lot of precise rules for different categories of software. In many cases the software is not put into a reference entry but just mentioned in the text with its proper name and version number (see Publication Manual of the American Psychological Society (5th edition, 2001), p.280)

Another mailing list example is at http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Comp/comp.text.tex/2007-10/msg01823.html:

Software with a manual:

@BOOK{lapack99,
AUTHOR = {Anderson, E. and Bai, Z. and Bischof, C. and
Blackford, S. and Demmel, J. and Dongarra, J. and
Du Croz, J. and Greenbaum, A. and Hammarling, S. and
McKenney, A. and Sorensen, D.},
TITLE = {{LAPACK} Users' Guide},
EDITION = {Third},
PUBLISHER = {Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics},
YEAR = {1999},
ADDRESS = {Philadelphia, PA},
ISBN = {0-89871-447-8 (paperback)} 
}

@Article{frigo-johnson05,
author =   {Matteo Frigo and Steven G. Johnson},
title =    {The design and implementation of {FFTW3}},
journal =  pieee,
year =     2005,
volume =   93,
number =   2,
pages =    {216--231},
month =    {February}
}

Free software with no published manual:

@Misc{popinet00,
author =   {Stephane Popinet},
title =    {{GTS}: {GNU} {Triangulated} {Surface} library},
howpublished = {\url{http://gts.sourceforge.net/}},
year = {2000--2004}
}
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