# Citation

### About Citation

You may want to include a file called CITATION or CITATION.txt that describes how to reference your project; the one for Software Carpentry states:

```
To reference Software Carpentry in publications, please cite both of the following:

Greg Wilson: "Software Carpentry: Getting Scientists to Write Better
Code by Making Them More Productive".  Computing in Science &
Engineering, Nov-Dec 2006.

Greg Wilson: "Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned". arXiv:1307.5448,
July 2013.

@article{wilson-software-carpentry-2006,
    author =  {Greg Wilson},
    title =   {Software Carpentry: Getting Scientists to Write Better Code by Making Them More Productive},
    journal = {Computing in Science \& Engineering},
    month =   {November--December},
    year =    {2006},
}

@online{wilson-software-carpentry-2013,
  author      = {Greg Wilson},
  title       = {Software Carpentry: Lessons Learned},
  version     = {1},
  date        = {2013-07-20},
  eprinttype  = {arxiv},
  eprint      = {1307.5448}
}
```

More detailed advice, and other ways to make your code citable can be found [at the Software Sustainability Institute blog](https://www.software.ac.uk/how-cite-software) and in:

```
Smith AM, Katz DS, Niemeyer KE, FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group. (2016) Software citation
principles. [PeerJ Computer Science 2:e86](https://peerj.com/articles/cs-86/)
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.8
```

There is also an [@software{...](https://www.google.com/search?q=git+citation+%22%40software%7B%22) [BibTeX](https://www.ctan.org/pkg/bibtex) entry type in case no “umbrella” citation like a paper or book exists for the project you want to make citable.


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://igb.mit.edu/mini-courses/version-control-with-git/citation.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.