R Citation – How to Cite R for Projects

It’s good form to cite the tools and resources you use for a project. We’re going to show you how to cite R using an easy process that is built into base R. This helps the R community at multiple levels.

• From an academic integrity perspective, it recognizes the contribution of others to the success of your research.
• It increases the overall credibility and perceived quality of your work by disclosing the key dependencies of your research. In the unlikely event an issue is found with one of the packages, it provides other scholars with the ability to identify problems in derivative works.
• It supports the developers and contributors to the community by recognizing the impact of their efforts.

You can get appropriate guidance on how to cite R through the use of the citation function within base R. Running it on base R yields…

# R citation example
> citation()

To cite R in publications use:

  R Core Team (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical
  computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
  URL https://www.R-project.org/.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
    author = {{R Core Team}},
    organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
    address = {Vienna, Austria},
    year = {2018},
    url = {https://www.R-project.org/},
  }

We have invested a lot of time and effort in creating R, please cite it
when using it for data analysis. See also ‘citation("pkgname")’ for
citing R packages.

It can also be run for a specific package. In this example, I’m going to show the citation information for the Rcurl package.

# R citation example - specific package
> citation("curl")

To cite package ‘curl’ in publications use:

  Jeroen Ooms (2019). curl: A Modern and Flexible Web Client for R. R
  package version 3.3. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=curl

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {curl: A Modern and Flexible Web Client for R},
    author = {Jeroen Ooms},
    year = {2019},
    note = {R package version 3.3},
    url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=curl},
  }

A second example, this time for the quantmod package.

# R citation example - specific package
> citation("quantmod")

To cite package ‘quantmod’ in publications use:

  Jeffrey A. Ryan and Joshua M. Ulrich (2018). quantmod: Quantitative
  Financial Modelling Framework. R package version 0.4-13.
  https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=quantmod

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {quantmod: Quantitative Financial Modelling Framework},
    author = {Jeffrey A. Ryan and Joshua M. Ulrich},
    year = {2018},
    note = {R package version 0.4-13},
    url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=quantmod},
  }