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Software archiving and DOI metadata

An immutable archive makes a specific frsutils release independently citable. This page describes a general GitHub–Zenodo workflow and is not tied to a particular package version or publication.

Metadata source

CITATION.cff is the source of software citation metadata. Before creating an archive, confirm that it contains the correct author, version, release date, license, repository URL, abstract, and keywords. Add identifiers only after they have been issued by the corresponding service.

GitHub–Zenodo workflow

  1. Sign in to Zenodo and link the GitHub account that owns the repository.
  2. Enable the mehi64/frsutils repository in Zenodo's GitHub integration.
  3. Publish a clean, annotated Git tag and matching GitHub release.
  4. Wait for Zenodo to ingest the release.

  5. Verify the Zenodo record:

  6. resource type is Software;

  7. version matches the Git tag;
  8. license is BSD-3-Clause;
  9. author and repository metadata are correct;

  10. the archived source corresponds to the intended release.

  11. Add the issued version-specific DOI to CITATION.cff:

yaml identifiers: - type: doi value: 10.5281/zenodo.<record> description: Archived frsutils <version> software release

  1. Add a DOI badge or citation link to the README when useful.
  2. Validate the updated citation file:

bash cffconvert --validate

  1. Commit the DOI metadata update without moving or recreating the immutable release tag.

Use the version DOI when citing a specific executable release. The Zenodo concept DOI may be used when a citation should resolve to the software project across releases.

Manual-upload alternative

Use a manual deposit when GitHub integration is unavailable:

git archive \
  --format=zip \
  --prefix=frsutils-<version>/ \
  --output=frsutils-<version>-source.zip \
  v<version>
sha256sum frsutils-<version>-source.zip

Upload the archive as Software, copy metadata from CITATION.cff, select the BSD-3-Clause license, and verify the generated checksum before publishing the record.

Citation maintenance

Keep the software archive DOI as the identifier of the executable artifact. A separate article, dataset, or methods publication may be recorded as a preferred citation only after its final bibliographic metadata and DOI are available.