The Quest for Scientific Credit for Software Documentation
summary
Argues that software documentation should receive scholarly credit by treating docs as citable research outputs, proposing concrete measures like assigning DOIs and recording citation metadata in registries. Presents evidence from an audit of existing documentation practices and describes a workflow for publishing metadata and badges to enable citation tracking. Reports on a pilot that registered documentation with persistent identifiers and tracked citation counts to evaluate whether these steps increased formal recognition.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Scientific credit for docs
- 3:21Documentation recognition challenges
- 6:52Academic credit for software
- 10:02Why docs deserve credit
- 14:00Open source credit model
- 17:17Fair credit proposals
- 20:34Future directions
- 23:53Summary and call to action
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