reference_handler

A python package for scientific software citation.

Motivation & goal

An appropriate recognition of the value of the scientific software on an equal footing with scholarly manuscripts and datasets is dependent upon the realization and promotion of community guidelines and best practices for software citation. Such practices can improve reproducibility and validation of the scientific discoveries, encourage software reuse and boost collaborative efforts.

Package overview

The reference handler is comprised of two core parts:

1. Central SQLite3 database which contains two tables: (i) the citation table which hosts all essential data pertinent to each unique citation, such as the raw citation text and its ID number, and (ii) the context table which contains information about the context in which a given citation was used. For instance, the function where the citation was used or the number of times the citation was "mentioned" by any function of your Python package. Since each citation can have many contexts, a one-to-many relationship exist between the citation and the context tables, respectively.

2. Functions to ease the interaction with central database. Examples are a function to cite a desired reference or a function to dump the contents of the database into a .bib file for subsequent compilation using BibTeX.

Audience

1. Method and scientific software developers.
1. Computational molecular science practitioners

Main features

Automatic and seamless runtime citation to all adopted software modules in the executed program
Managing citations within complex workflows and interoperable environments conveniently with simple syntax and APIs
Providing context and number of counts for all modules used in the executed application
Prioritization of all cited modules at different levels
Recommended citation style according to the community guidelines and best practices
Exporting references as databases and formatted documents in BibTeX and RIS

Installation

Step 1: Clone this repository on a host machine:

$ git clone git@github.com:MolSSI/reference_handler.git

Step 2: Change the current directory to reference_handler's root directory:

$ cd <path-to-reference-handler-root-directory>/reference_handler

Step 3: Create a Conda environment with python 3.9 and pip:

$ conda create -n <env-name> python=3.9 pip

replace the <env-name> with the desired name of your environment.

Step 4: Activate your conda environment:

$ conda activate <env-name>

Step 5: Run the following command to install bibtexparser 1.2.0 using pip within your conda environment

$ pip install bibtexparser==1.2.0

Step 6: Finally, run the following command to install reference_handler in your conda environment

$ make install

Step 7 (optional): Make sure all tests run without errors

$ pytest -v

Minimal example

import reference_handler

lj_citation = """
@article{lj1924,
author = {J. E. Jones  and Sydney Chapman },
title = {On the determination of molecular fields. \&\#x2014;II. From the equation of state of a gas},
journal = {Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical and Physical Character},
volume = {106},
number = {738},
pages = {463-477},
year = {1924},
doi = {10.1098/rspa.1924.0082},
}
"""

def lennard_jones(sigma, epsilon, rij):
    rf.cite(raw=lj_citation, alias='lj_citation', module='lennard_jones',
        level=1, note='The first version of the Lennard-Jones potential')
    sig_by_r6 = (sigma / rij ** 6)
    sig_by_r12 = (sig_by_r6 ** 2)
    return 4.0 * epsilon * (sig_by_r12 - sig_by_r6)

rf = reference_handler.Reference_Handler('database.db')

sigma = 3.54
epsilon = 98.0
rij = 20.0

lj_energy = lennard_jones(sigma, epsilon, rij)

rf.dump(outfile='bibliography.bib')

Documentation

The documentation is under development. Please check back later.

References

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Project based on the Computational Molecular Science Python Cookiecutter version 1.0.