Should one cite a LaTeX package in a scientific publication?

Question

R world has the convention of citing heavily used packages in a scientific publication (see for example this). You can get the reference to be used with citation() command. For example:

citation("base")

To cite R in publications use:

  R Core Team (2013). R: A language and environment for statistical computing.
  R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL
  http://www.R-project.org/.

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is

  @Manual{,
    title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
    author = {{R Core Team}},
    organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
    address = {Vienna, Austria},
    year = {2013},
    url = {http://www.R-project.org/},
  }

We have invested a lot of time and effort in creating R, please cite it when
using it for data analysis. See also ‘citation("pkgname")’ for citing R
packages.

I am not familiar with LaTeX conventions. Should you cite a heavily used LaTeX package in a scientific publication? Say that I have for example used pgfplotstable to make table that would have been impossible/very difficult to make otherwise. If the answer is 'Yes', where can I find the format the author of a package prefers?

Answer 1

this is a tough one. i'd have to say, in general, no.

R is a tool for data analysis, which is what a scientific publication is about. most latex packages are intended for data presentation, so although they may be invaluable, they're not at the same level as an analytical tool.

that said, some authors credit (la)tex on the copyright page of books, or in acknowledgments. and if a publication is meta-scientific, say on how to present data effectively, then a credit or citation would be appropriate.

Answer 2

Short answer. No, you don't need to do that, but you can.

A bit longer answer. In general, it might be a good idea to mention in which software you draw your figures, so for instance I tend to cite TikZ recently in my articles. There seem to be no exactly standard way of doing it. I've ended with this .bib entry:

@manual {tikz,
    key = {Ti\textit{k}Z},
    organization = {Till Tantau et al.},
    title = {Ti\textit{k}{Z} \& {PGF} (version 2.10)},
    note = {\url{http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgf}},
    year = {2010},
}

(You might have to remove the key, depending on your bibliography style.) With amsplain this gets displayed as

Till Tantau et al., \emph{Ti\textit{k}{Z} \& {PGF} (version 2.10)}, 2010,
\url{http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgf}.

which is quite fine.

Answer 3

Citations and references are for sources that have contributed to the content of a text (which can include the statistical analysis).

While it is not necessary or expected that you cite the document preparation software used, this kind of information is traditionally included in the colophon, a little summary of the typography used for a publication. (Only applicable to books or other stand-alone works, as far as I know). If you're excited about the ease and quality that the use of LaTeX (and/or particular packages) has made possible, you can acknowledge it by adding a little blurb in the back of the book. (Wikipedia says the colophon usually appears in the front nowadays; I guess I'm just old-fashioned).

But short works like articles have no place for a colophon. For those, some people mention LaTeX in the acknowledgements (which, depending on the text, might appear in a footnote or in a short section at the start or end of the article.) Again, there's traditional precedent: Authors used to thank the secretary who typed numberless versions of their manuscript; and you'll still see novelists thank their editor, for example.