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I am building my R package using Roxygen2 and devtools, and I would like to add some citation information in my R codes (i.e. I hope to write in a .R file from which the citations can be auto-generated). The ultimate goal is to display, once I run the command citation(MyPkgName), the citations of the R package as well as the citation (preferrably with BibTeX entry) of the paper I submit. Is there a way to do that using devtools? Thanks!

alittleboy
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    It's not clear to me. Are you writing a package? Does creating a CITATION file not do what you want? – Dason May 12 '13 at 00:16
  • @Dason: yes, I am writing an R package and hope to include the citation information, but I don't know how to do that... – alittleboy May 12 '13 at 01:22
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    Learn by [stealing from someone else](https://github.com/trinker/reports/blob/master/inst/CITATION). I personally break into Hadely and Dason's GitHub all the time to figure what to do with docuemntation. This file goes in your inst director. – Tyler Rinker May 12 '13 at 01:31
  • @TylerRinker: thanks a lot! I learned how to do that and put a CITATION file in the `inst` folder – alittleboy May 12 '13 at 06:00
  • Check out the Citations page of Hadley's [R Packages][http://r-pkgs.had.co.nz/inst.html] guide for more examples. – Tom Kelly Jun 02 '18 at 04:54

3 Answers3

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A file called "CITATION" needs to be created in the directory "yourPackage/inst/". The file CITATION can be created automatically with

usethis::use_citation()

This file will contain an unfilled template with blank fields for citation information (e.g., author, journal, year, etc.) You need to fill in the gaps.

Lacey Etzkorn
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epo3
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19

The CITATION file should be in the inst directory. See the official documentation for details of what should be in the file.

csgillespie
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2

Another way to include citation in your package is during attach time (e.g. when using library()).

You can do so using the function .onAttach() (it could go in a zzz.R file, as suggested in Hadley's R Packages book).

One example, would be:

.onAttach<-function(libname, pkgname){
      packageStartupMessage('Please cite this paper!') 
}

But you can easily search for other examples in the net, as this one including a call to citation().

elcortegano
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    I prefer if the packages do not print out unnecessary messages when being loaded. Providing information for citation() call is enough. – krassowski Dec 05 '20 at 10:05