How to make your research code or software citable?

DS³ Lunch Lecture, 04 November 2026. Research software plays an increasingly important role in research, yet its creators and contributions often remain underacknowledged. Formal software citation helps address this by making research software findable and accessible, supporting reproducibility, and ensuring appropriate credit and attribution. This short talk introduces the principles of software citation and explains what information is needed to make research software properly citable, discusses some of the more intricate questions such as software authorship and persistent identifiers, and provides practical tips on how to collect these relevant metadata. Focusing on practical steps for software developers and maintainers, the talk also demonstrates how to provide citation metadata using the Citation File Format (CFF) by putting a CITATION.cff file in a software repository. It introduces tools and integrations that facilitate creating, validating, maintaining, and publishing citation metadata, including integrations with GitHub, Zenodo, Software Heritage, and reference managers. Participants will leave with a practical understanding of how to make their own research software citable and ensure that software contributions receive appropriate recognition in research.