Making Your Code Citable
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Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) are the backbone of the academic reference and metrics system. If you’re a researcher writing software, this guide will show you how to make the work you share on GitHub citable by archiving one of your GitHub repositories and assigning a DOI with the data archiving tool Zenodo.
ProTip: This tutorial is aimed at researchers who want to cite GitHub repositories in academic literature. Provided you’ve already set up a GitHub repository, this tutorial can be completed without installing any special software. If you haven’t yet created a project on GitHub, start first byuploading your work to a repository.
Choose your repository
Repositories are the most basic element of GitHub. They’re easiest to imagine as your project’s folder. The first step in creating a DOI is to select the repository you want to archive in Zenodo. To do so, head over to your profile and click the Repositories tab.
Important! Make sure you tell people how they can reuse your work by including a license in your repository. If you don’t know which license is right for you, then take a look at choosealicense.com.
Login to Zenodo
Next, head over to Zenodo and click the Sign In button at the top right of the page, which gives you an option to login with your GitHub account.
Zenodo will redirect you back to GitHub to ask for your permission to share your email address and the ability to configure webhooks on your repositories. Go ahead and click Authorize application to give Zenodo the permissions it needs.
Pick the repository you want to archive
At this point, you’ve authorized Zenodo to configure the repository webhooks needed to allow for archiving and DOI-issuing. To enable this functionality, simply click the On toggle button next to your repository (in this case My-Awesome-Science-Software).
Check repository settings
By enabling archiving in Zenodo, you have set up a new webhook on your repository. Click the settings icon in your repository, and then click ‘Webhooks & Services’ in the left-hand menu. You should see something like the image below, which shows a new webhook configured to send messages to Zenodo.
Create a new release
By default, Zenodo takes an archive of your GitHub repository each time you create a new Release. To test this out, head back to the main repository view and click on the releases header item.
Unless you’ve created releases for this repository before, you will be asked toCreate a new release. Go ahead and click this button and fill in the new release form.
If this is the first release of your code then you should give it a version number of
1.0. Fill in any release notes and click the Publish release button.
Checking everything has worked
Creating a new release will trigger Zenodo into archiving your repository. You can confirm that this process took place by click the Upload tab in your Zenodo profile. You should see a new upload in the right-hand panel.
Minting a DOI
Before Zenodo can issue a DOI for your repository, you will need to provide some information about the GitHub repo that you’ve just archived.
Once you’re happy with the description of your software, click the Submitbutton at the bottom of the Zenodo form, and voilà, you’ve just made a shiny new DOI for your GitHub repo!
Finishing up
Back on your Zenodo GitHub page you should now see your repository listed with a shiny new badge showing your new DOI!
ProTip: If you really want to show off, then right click on the gray and blue DOI image and copy the URL and place it in your README on your GitHub repo.
Last updated May, 2014
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