Why?

When working on your research project, probably you will need to cite the R packages used in your data analysis. Also, probably you use Zotero as your reference manager, so, how can you manage the R packages references in Zotero?

Well, here I will show you one manual way to do it.

Obtain the package citation

This one is easy. You just use the function `citation(“dplyr”) and in your console will appear all the bibliographic info from that package.

citation("dplyr")


To cite package 'dplyr' in publications use:

  Wickham H, François R, Henry L, Müller K (2022). _dplyr: A Grammar of
  Data Manipulation_. R package version 1.0.9,
  <https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr>.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {dplyr: A Grammar of Data Manipulation},
    author = {Hadley Wickham and Romain François and Lionel Henry and Kirill Müller},
    year = {2022},
    note = {R package version 1.0.9},
    url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr},
  }

Now, you need to pay attention on the section that says: A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

Creating the BibTex file

From where the @ starts, that’s what you need. So, copy (be aware of selecting the last } line) and paste it in a text file. This can be your Text Editor in ubuntu, Notepad, notes or even a Text File in your RStudio.

You can copy and paste as many references you need. It can look something like this:

@Article{,
  title = {{weathercan}: {D}ownload and format weather data from Environment and Climate Change Canada},
  author = {Stefanie E LaZerte and Sam Albers},
  journal = {The Journal of Open Source Software},
  volume = {3},
  number = {22},
  pages = {571},
  year = {2018},
  url = {https://joss.theoj.org/papers/10.21105/joss.00571},
}

@Manual{,
 title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
 author = {{R Core Team}},
 organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
 address = {Vienna, Austria},
 year = {2021},
 url = {https://www.R-project.org/},
}

@Manual{,
  title = {dplyr: A Grammar of Data Manipulation},
  author = {Hadley Wickham and Romain François and Lionel Henry and Kirill Müller},
  year = {2022},
  note = {R package version 1.0.9},
  url = {https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dplyr},
}

Save it with the extention .bib:

Importing the file in Zotero

Open Zotero and look for the option import. It will open a window.

Select the option (BibTex, RIS, Zotero RDF, etc.) and from there, look the file in the path you saved. Open the file and a new window will pop up. The options to select there are up to you:

Finally, you will see that you have the references imported to Zotero!

Reuse

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Citation

BibTeX citation:

@online{a. hernandez mora2022,
  author = {A. Hernandez Mora, Ronny and Calderon Morales, Erick},
  title = {Packages Citation and Zotero},
  date = {2022-09-14},
  url = {https://profound-caramel-d8abb6.netlify.app/posts/2022-09-14-package-citation-zotero/packages_citation_zotero.html},
  langid = {en}
}

For attribution, please cite this work as:

A. Hernandez Mora, Ronny, and Erick Calderon Morales. 2022. “Packages Citation and Zotero.” September 14, 2022. https://profound-caramel-d8abb6.netlify.app/posts/2022-09-14-package-citation-zotero/packages_citation_zotero.html.