contributed-code

[Helena Mitasova]

Bill Baker writes:

>There is a request in one of the README files that if the code is used
>that a published article we wrote about the programs be cited. 

>Short of scientific etiquette, there may be nothing wrong with this,
>and I may even be wrong about interpreting this as anything but an
>oversight.  But, it does raise a concern in my mind that others who
>contribute code may share.  Some code is contributed without any 
>request for citation as there is nothing to cite, other code is 
>associated with published work or documentation that could be cited.
>Do any code contributors have thoughts about how we can achieve some
>of the minor rewards of developing and contributing code (i.e., it
>gets used), while still having a little protection against use without
>citation?  Maybe this is only important to those of us in academia
>and elsewhere where citation is a measure of our value.  Perhaps 
>I'm the only one concerned about this...

        Bill Baker
        Dept. of Geography
        Univ. of Wyoming
        Laramie, WY 82071

Bill, you are not the only one and we share your concern. 
Because GRASS is still a public domain software, very little
can be done to protect its contributions.
To continue our research work in a direction which can produce
contributions to GRASS we need to prove that our contributions
are used, important and have impact in the scientific comunity.
The best way how to prove this is to present a list of citations
from scientific papers where the contributed program was used.
Reference to GRASS is not recognized as a sufficient proof as it is 
too general.
It would be also extremely helpful if users of our programs could
send us reprints of their papers, even if they did not cite any
papers we have published. Reprints can also be used to show how
important our contributed programs are and how they enhance the 
research in different fields. 
To make it easier to find the proper paper describing the methods
we have implemented in GRASS, we have made all our relevant 
papers available via www,
see the document http://www.cecer.army.mil/grass/viz/VIZ.html.

Helena Mitasova, 
Environmental Modeling and Visualization Group
Spatial Modeling and Systems Team
U.S.Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories
P.O.Box 9005
Champaign, Illinois 61826-9005

helena at diego.cecer.army.mil

P.S. The programs contributed by our group are xganim, SG3d,
r.out.mpeg, s.surf.tps, v.surf.tps, r.resample.tps, s.surf.3d,
r.flow.