How to Cite SciDAVis in a Paper

If SciDAVis helped you analyze data or prepare figures, citing it does two things: it gives credit to the volunteer developers who maintain it, and it makes your work reproducible — readers can see exactly which tool and version produced your results. Unlike some tools, SciDAVis has no journal paper with a DOI to point at, so you cite it as software.

Who wrote it?

According to the upstream repository’s README, the people who wrote parts of the SciDAVis source code are, in alphabetical order: Tilman Benkert, Knut Franke, Miquel Garriga, Arun Narayanankutty, and Russell Standish. If your style guide prefers a corporate author, “SciDAVis Development Team” is a reasonable substitute. The program is released under the GNU General Public License.

Which version and year?

Always cite the version you actually used — check Help → About in the program. The most recent upstream source release tag is 2.9.2 (April 2022), and the prebuilt packages on SourceForge are at version 2.8. The templates below use placeholders where they exist; replace them with your version, year, and URL before pasting into your manuscript.

APA (7th edition)

Template:

SciDAVis Development Team. (Year). SciDAVis (Version x.x) [Computer software]. URL

Filled example (adapt to your version):

SciDAVis Development Team. (2022). SciDAVis (Version 2.9.2) [Computer software]. https://github.com/SciDAVis/scidavis

If you prefer naming the developers:

Standish, R., Benkert, T., Franke, K., Garriga, M., & Narayanankutty, A. (2022). SciDAVis (Version 2.9.2) [Computer software]. https://github.com/SciDAVis/scidavis

BibTeX

Template:

@software{scidavis,
  author = {{SciDAVis Development Team}},
  title = {SciDAVis},
  version = {x.x},
  year = {Year},
  url = {URL},
}

Filled example (adapt to your version):

@software{scidavis,
  author = {{SciDAVis Development Team}},
  title = {SciDAVis},
  version = {2.9.2},
  year = {2022},
  url = {https://github.com/SciDAVis/scidavis},
}

If your bibliography style does not recognize @software, use @misc with the same fields — most styles accept it.

Plain text

For journals or repositories that want a plain-text citation:

SciDAVis Development Team. SciDAVis, version 2.9.2. 2022. Available at https://github.com/SciDAVis/scidavis

Which URL should you use?

Either of the two canonical addresses is fine — pick one and use it consistently:

• GitHub repository: github.com/SciDAVis/scidavis — the current home of the source code, issue tracker, and release tags.
• SourceForge project: sourceforge.net/projects/scidavis — hosts the prebuilt installers most people actually download.

If you used a prebuilt installer (the common case), the SourceForge URL is arguably the more precise pointer, since it leads a reader to the same binary you ran. If you built from source or want to reference the code itself, use GitHub.

What if your journal asks for a DOI?

Some journals and data repositories strongly prefer DOIs. SciDAVis has no registered software DOI that we could verify, so do not invent one. If your submission system requires a DOI field, leave it blank or write “none” rather than linking to an unrelated record — a fake DOI is worse than none. The URL plus version number fully identifies the software for reproducibility purposes.

One-line Methods section wording

If you just need a sentence for the Methods section:

Data analysis, curve fitting, and figure preparation were performed with SciDAVis version 2.9.2 (SciDAVis Development Team, 2022; https://github.com/SciDAVis/scidavis).

Replace the version number with the one from Help → About. For the official download sources, see our download page, which links the upstream GitHub repository and SourceForge project.

If you modified the code

If you patched SciDAVis itself — added a fit function, fixed a bug, changed the analysis — say so explicitly. Cite the base version as above, then add a sentence like: “The peak-fitting routine was modified from the 2.9.2 source; the modified source is archived at [your repository or supplementary materials link].” Readers need to know your results did not come from the stock build.