Citing MATLAB products or relative webpage

Hi all,

I read different topics about this question, but some links are no longer available and I need to know something, please. In my paper I'm talking about Simscape Multibody, but no info about its citation is present in the relative pages. Assuming a bibitem as the following one (or different one if it is more proper than this):

@misc{name,
    author = "author",
    title = "title",
    year = "year",
    url = "url",
    note = "[note]"
}

what kind of argument can I insert in each section considering Simscape Multibody at the following link https://www.mathworks.com/products/simmechanics.html?

For example, at this link https://it.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/47417-simscape-multibody-contact-forces-library there si a section named "Cite As" where all the info are available.

What is the better way to do that?

Thanks,

best regards

Answer 1

[Monika Jaskolka]

@Misc{miller2021simscape,
  author       = {Steve Miller},
  url          = {https://github.com/mathworks/Simscape-Multibody-Contact-Forces-Library/releases/tag/20.2.5.0},
  month        = feb,
  note         = {[Online; accessed Feb 2021]},
  title        = {Simscape Multibody Contact Forces Library},
  year         = {2021},
}

[Giacomo Bonafede]

Hi Monika, thanks for the answer. The case I'd like to know is the first one, for simmechanics (or Simscape Multibody, the first link) which has no specific information about its citing. Can you build the same bibitem structure for that too?

[Monika Jaskolka]

In the case where this information is not explicitly stated, you follow the general procedure for citing a web page. Based on the bibitem you are using (in this case misc), find the information that you need to populate the mandatory fields. There are a lot of online guides for "citing webpages" from organizations. Not every webpage will tell you how to cite it, so just do your best in getting the necessary data.

@Misc{mathworks2021simscape,
  author       = {{The MathWorks, Inc.}},
  url          = {https://www.mathworks.com/products/simmechanics.html},
  month        = feb,
  note         = {[Online; accessed Feb 2021]},
  title        = {Simscape Multibody},
  year         = {2021},
}

If you want to cite the software specifically (instead of the webpage), I would include the software version in the note, like so:

note         = {Release 7.2 [Online; accessed Feb 2021]},

If you are referencing some specific text on a MathWorks webpage, I would recommend that you cite the PDF version of the documentation instead because it will be persistent as new Matlab versions are released. I usually cite things from the User's Guide PDF. To do this, go to the Archived MathWorks Documentation page and find the appropriate links there for the version you need. If you need the version of the doumentation for the most current release (in this case R2020b), open the R2020a link and change the url to be R2020b, like the one shown below:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020b/pdf_doc/physmod/sm/sm_ug.pdf

The "PDF Documentation" links found on the help pages (to the right, and also at the bottom) will always link to the newest PDF and will not have the release indicated. This is not good because as new versions of Matlab are released the documentation may change significantly, and so the generic link (shown below) may not link to the specific document version you need.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/pdf_doc/physmod/sm/sm_ug.pdf

[Giacomo Bonafede]

My documentation consists of a brief mention of these software and products (MATLAB, Simulink, Simscape Multibody and Contact Forces Library), what they are and what functionalities they have. As you said in the first section I made an element @misc like yours, considering the information I had. They are almost similar, except for the fact I didn't set the note voice. For MATLAB and Simulink I cited the links from Wikipedia which contains a specific section for citing its documents, while for the library the info in the link I posted above in my question (but identical to your first asnwer).

So, thank you very much for the rest of what you wrote, there are so much info!