Under the data-driven research paradigm, research software has come to play crucial roles in nearly every stage of scientific inquiry. Scholars are advocating for the formal citation of software in academic publications, treating it on par with traditional research outputs. However, software is hardly consistently cited: one software entity can be cited as different objects, and the citations can change over time. These issues, however, are largely overlooked in existing empirical research on software citation. To fill the above gaps, the present study compares and analyzes a longitudinal dataset of citation formats of all R packages collected in 2021 and 2022, in order to understand the citation formats of R-language packages, important members in the open-source software family, and how the citations evolve over time. In particular, we investigate the different document types underlying the citations and what metadata elements in the citation formats changed over time. Furthermore, we offer an in-depth analysis of the disciplinarity of journal articles cited as software (software papers). By undertaking this research, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of the complexities associated with software citation, shedding light on future software citation policies and infrastructure.

研究软件在科学研究的各个阶段中扮演的关键角色，比较和分析了2021年和2022年收集的所有R包的引用格式的长期数据集，以了解R语言包的引文格式，以及引文随时间的演变。此外，对引用为软件的期刊文章的学科进行了深入分析，旨在为对软件引用复杂性的更好理解，未来的软件引用政策和基础设施提供启示。

软件引用格式如何随时间演变？R编程语言包的纵向分析