I'm a university student and I recently composed a written report & verbal presentation that directly referenced the Semantic Versioning Specification. As is customary in academia, I was expected to cite my sources in a way that conformed with a particular English formatting and style guide. I looked through both https://github.com/semver/semver and https://github.com/semver/semver.org, but found no written documentation indicating how to properly cite the SemVer spec in my paper. The closest I came was to discovering issue #357 from 2017, which references a Google Scholar link that has since been removed.
GitHub directly supports repository citation files that conform to the Citation File Format standard. Adding a CITATION.cff file to the root of a repository will cause a "Cite this repository" link to appear under the repo description:
Clicking on the text will render a dropdown with a brief message about repository citations, and different formatting options that the viewer can use to cite the repo:
My PR creates a CITATION.cff with information about the original SemVer author, along with the recorded release date of v2.0.0 (according to https://github.com/semver/semver/releases/tag/v2.0.0). Please let me know if any changes should be made to the citation metadata, such as the addition of other authors.
🔄 This issue represents a GitHub Pull Request. It cannot be merged through Gitea due to API limitations.
## 📋 Pull Request Information
**Original PR:** https://github.com/semver/semver/pull/905
**Author:** [@elijaholmos](https://github.com/elijaholmos)
**Created:** 12/17/2022
**Status:** ✅ Merged
**Merged:** 11/5/2025
**Merged by:** [@JohnTitor](https://github.com/JohnTitor)
**Base:** `master` ← **Head:** `citation`
---
### 📝 Commits (2)
- [`6c801f3`](https://github.com/semver/semver/commit/6c801f323c72c8448ee6dbd4530b54c4e14942fa) docs: create CITATION.cff
- [`27487d7`](https://github.com/semver/semver/commit/27487d73b555e71b862216837778f4297225d5c8) Add the semver team to authors
### 📊 Changes
**1 file changed** (+13 additions, -0 deletions)
<details>
<summary>View changed files</summary>
➕ `CITATION.cff` (+13 -0)
</details>
### 📄 Description
Closes #912
Hello! 👋
I'm a university student and I recently composed a written report & verbal presentation that directly referenced the Semantic Versioning Specification. As is customary in academia, I was expected to cite my sources in a way that conformed with a particular English formatting and style guide. I looked through both https://github.com/semver/semver and https://github.com/semver/semver.org, but found no written documentation indicating how to properly cite the SemVer spec in my paper. The closest I came was to discovering issue #357 from 2017, which references a Google Scholar link that has since been removed.
GitHub directly supports repository [citation files](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/about-citation-files) that conform to the [Citation File Format](https://citation-file-format.github.io/) standard. Adding a `CITATION.cff` file to the root of a repository will cause a "Cite this repository" link to appear under the repo description:
Clicking on the text will render a dropdown with a brief message about repository citations, and different formatting options that the viewer can use to cite the repo:
My PR creates a `CITATION.cff` with information about the original SemVer author, along with the recorded release date of v2.0.0 (according to https://github.com/semver/semver/releases/tag/v2.0.0). Please let me know if any changes should be made to the citation metadata, such as the addition of other authors.
---
<sub>🔄 This issue represents a GitHub Pull Request. It cannot be merged through Gitea due to API limitations.</sub>
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📋 Pull Request Information
Original PR: https://github.com/semver/semver/pull/905
Author: @elijaholmos
Created: 12/17/2022
Status: ✅ Merged
Merged: 11/5/2025
Merged by: @JohnTitor
Base:
master← Head:citation📝 Commits (2)
6c801f3docs: create CITATION.cff27487d7Add the semver team to authors📊 Changes
1 file changed (+13 additions, -0 deletions)
View changed files
➕
CITATION.cff(+13 -0)📄 Description
Closes #912
Hello! 👋
I'm a university student and I recently composed a written report & verbal presentation that directly referenced the Semantic Versioning Specification. As is customary in academia, I was expected to cite my sources in a way that conformed with a particular English formatting and style guide. I looked through both https://github.com/semver/semver and https://github.com/semver/semver.org, but found no written documentation indicating how to properly cite the SemVer spec in my paper. The closest I came was to discovering issue #357 from 2017, which references a Google Scholar link that has since been removed.
GitHub directly supports repository citation files that conform to the Citation File Format standard. Adding a
CITATION.cfffile to the root of a repository will cause a "Cite this repository" link to appear under the repo description:Clicking on the text will render a dropdown with a brief message about repository citations, and different formatting options that the viewer can use to cite the repo:
My PR creates a
CITATION.cffwith information about the original SemVer author, along with the recorded release date of v2.0.0 (according to https://github.com/semver/semver/releases/tag/v2.0.0). Please let me know if any changes should be made to the citation metadata, such as the addition of other authors.🔄 This issue represents a GitHub Pull Request. It cannot be merged through Gitea due to API limitations.