Citation File Format website screenshot

Citation File Format

The Citation File Format (CFF) is a human- and machine-readable YAML schema for providing citation metadata for software and datasets in source code repositories. A CITATION.cff file at the root of a repository declares authors, version, DOI, release date, and reference metadata, enabling consistent academic attribution across publishing and discovery platforms. CFF is governed as an open community standard with a published JSON Schema, a guide, and a maintained schema repository on GitHub. Native integrations include GitHub citation display, Zenodo software publishing, and the Zotero browser plugin. Tooling includes cffinit for authoring, cffconvert for conversion to BibTeX/RIS/CodeMeta/EndNote formats, and the cff-validator GitHub Action for CI validation. The current schema version is 1.2.0.

6 APIs 0 Features
AcademicCitationMetadataOpen StandardRepositoryResearchSoftwareYAML

APIs

Citation File Format Schema

The CFF schema defines the structure of a CITATION.cff file in YAML, including required cff-version, message, and authors fields plus optional version, doi, license, repository-...

cffinit Authoring Tool

cffinit is a web-based form that walks software authors through creating a syntactically and semantically valid CITATION.cff file. It produces downloadable YAML and validates co...

cffconvert

cffconvert is a Python command-line tool and library that converts CITATION.cff files to APA plain text, BibTeX, CodeMeta, EndNote, RIS, schema.org JSON-LD, and Zenodo depositio...

cff-validator GitHub Action

The cff-validator GitHub Action runs schema validation on a repository's CITATION.cff during continuous integration so that malformed or non-compliant citation metadata is caugh...

GitHub Native Citation Support

GitHub natively reads CITATION.cff files and renders a Cite this repository button on the repository landing page that generates BibTeX and APA snippets from the file's metadata.

Zenodo Software Publishing

The GitHub-Zenodo integration uses CITATION.cff metadata when publishing a release as a citable software record. Zenodo assigns a DOI and populates the deposit form from the CFF...

Pricing Plans

Citation Cff Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits

Citation Cff Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps

Citation Cff Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies

Citation Cff Context

26 classes · 0 properties

JSON-LD

API Governance Rules

Citation File Format API Rules

10 rules · 4 errors 6 warnings

SPECTRAL

Resources

🔗
Website
Website
🔗
Documentation
Documentation
🔗
Schema Guide
Schema Guide
🔗
Schema
Schema
👥
GitHub
GitHub
🔗
Governance
Governance
🔗
Issues
Issues
🔗
License
License
🔗
Citation
Citation
🔗
JSONLD
JSONLD
🔗
JSONSchema
JSONSchema
🔗
Spectral
Spectral

Sources

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: citation-cff
name: Citation File Format
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/citation-cff/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2025-01-01'
modified: '2026-04-23'
kind: standard
access: Open
position: Standard
specificationVersion: '0.19'
tags:
- Academic
- Citation
- Metadata
- Open Standard
- Repository
- Research
- Software
- YAML
description: The Citation File Format (CFF) is a human- and machine-readable YAML schema for providing citation metadata for
  software and datasets in source code repositories. A CITATION.cff file at the root of a repository declares authors, version,
  DOI, release date, and reference metadata, enabling consistent academic attribution across publishing and discovery platforms.
  CFF is governed as an open community standard with a published JSON Schema, a guide, and a maintained schema repository
  on GitHub. Native integrations include GitHub citation display, Zenodo software publishing, and the Zotero browser plugin.
  Tooling includes cffinit for authoring, cffconvert for conversion to BibTeX/RIS/CodeMeta/EndNote formats, and the cff-validator
  GitHub Action for CI validation. The current schema version is 1.2.0.
apis:
- aid: citation-cff:cff-schema
  name: Citation File Format Schema
  tags:
  - JSON Schema
  - Schema
  - Validation
  - YAML
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format
  properties:
  - url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/blob/main/schema.json
    type: JSONSchema
  - url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/blob/main/README.md
    type: Documentation
  - url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/blob/main/schema-guide.md
    type: Schema Guide
  - url: https://citation-file-format.github.io/
    type: Website
  - url: json-schema/citation-cff-schema.json
    type: JSONSchema
  description: The CFF schema defines the structure of a CITATION.cff file in YAML, including required cff-version, message,
    and authors fields plus optional version, doi, license, repository-code, preferred-citation, and references blocks. The
    current schema version is 1.2.0 and is published as JSON Schema in the citation-file-format GitHub repository under an
    open-source license.
- aid: citation-cff:cffinit
  name: cffinit Authoring Tool
  tags:
  - Authoring
  - cffinit
  - Web App
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://citation-file-format.github.io/cff-initializer-javascript/
  properties:
  - url: https://citation-file-format.github.io/cff-initializer-javascript/
    type: Web Application
  - url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/cff-initializer-javascript
    type: Source Code
  description: cffinit is a web-based form that walks software authors through creating a syntactically and semantically valid
    CITATION.cff file. It produces downloadable YAML and validates content against the CFF schema in real time.
- aid: citation-cff:cffconvert
  name: cffconvert
  tags:
  - BibTeX
  - cffconvert
  - CodeMeta
  - Conversion
  - RIS
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://github.com/citation-file-format/cffconvert
  properties:
  - url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/cffconvert
    type: Source Code
  - url: https://pypi.org/project/cffconvert/
    type: Package
  description: cffconvert is a Python command-line tool and library that converts CITATION.cff files to APA plain text, BibTeX,
    CodeMeta, EndNote, RIS, schema.org JSON-LD, and Zenodo deposition JSON. It also validates CFF files against the published
    schema.
- aid: citation-cff:cff-validator
  name: cff-validator GitHub Action
  tags:
  - CI
  - GitHub Action
  - Validation
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://github.com/dieghernan/cff-validator
  properties:
  - url: https://github.com/dieghernan/cff-validator
    type: Source Code
  - url: https://github.com/marketplace/actions/cff-validator
    type: Marketplace
  description: The cff-validator GitHub Action runs schema validation on a repository's CITATION.cff during continuous integration
    so that malformed or non-compliant citation metadata is caught before release.
- aid: citation-cff:github-citation-integration
  name: GitHub Native Citation Support
  tags:
  - Discovery
  - GitHub
  - Integration
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/about-citation-files
  properties:
  - url: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/about-citation-files
    type: Documentation
  description: GitHub natively reads CITATION.cff files and renders a Cite this repository button on the repository landing
    page that generates BibTeX and APA snippets from the file's metadata.
- aid: citation-cff:zenodo-integration
  name: Zenodo Software Publishing
  tags:
  - DOI
  - Publishing
  - Repository
  - Zenodo
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  humanURL: https://zenodo.org/
  properties:
  - url: https://zenodo.org/
    type: Documentation
  - url: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/archiving-a-github-repository/referencing-and-citing-content
    type: Integration Documentation
  description: The GitHub-Zenodo integration uses CITATION.cff metadata when publishing a release as a citable software record.
    Zenodo assigns a DOI and populates the deposit form from the CFF file's authors, title, and version.
common:
- type: Website
  url: https://citation-file-format.github.io/
- type: Documentation
  url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format
- type: Schema Guide
  url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/blob/main/schema-guide.md
- type: Schema
  url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/blob/main/schema.json
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/citation-file-format
- type: Governance
  url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/governance
- type: Issues
  url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/issues
- type: License
  url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/blob/main/LICENSE
- type: Citation
  url: https://github.com/citation-file-format/citation-file-format/blob/main/CITATION.cff
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/citation-cff-context.jsonld
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/citation-cff-schema.json
- type: Spectral
  url: rules/citation-cff-rules.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com