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This is an extension of this post

Is there a good option to obtain a proper citation for latex packages which have been used like R's citation() ?

927589452
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    Probably not. You can cite as @misc with the package author, package title and url of the manual on CTAN, but you have to do it manually. If you really want you can probably parse the log file and construct code for citing from the package loading logs, but I'm not sure that is worth the trouble. – Marijn Sep 21 '19 at 12:33
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    There is https://ctan.org/pkg/ctanbib, but I think it only scrapes the metadata from CTAN. – moewe Sep 21 '19 at 14:08
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    It should be noted that R has a culture of citing packages and publications affiliated with packages and that there is no such culture in LaTeX land. It is extremely rare to cite LaTeX packages (outside of articles about LaTeX or package documentations), so package authors probably don't really curate a 'please cite as' as some R package authors do. – moewe Sep 21 '19 at 16:37
  • though would it be a good practice to start it @moewe ? – 927589452 Sep 21 '19 at 19:43
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    Are you talking about starting the practice of citing LaTeX packages or about providing 'please cite as' guidance? I'm not sure about either. Providing citation guidance only becomes useful if people are interested in citing packages. Some (many?) R packages are directly linked with serious academic research and publications, this is rarely the case with LaTeX packages. Citing those R packages contributes to the author's academic reputation, again not something that happens with LaTeX packages all that often. ... – moewe Sep 22 '19 at 13:19
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    ... I'm not sure how many R packages the average scientist uses and cites (do people cite all packages they use, how do they decide?), but judging from preambles of people's papers I have seen, you'd have to add at least one page of references for all the packages people load (and probably never use). – moewe Sep 22 '19 at 13:20
  • but it might be useful for other as in: "How did this nice typesetting get done?" – 927589452 Sep 22 '19 at 14:00

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