Citation of QGroundControl?

Blue Robotics Software QGroundControl
1

Hi all,

I was just wondering if anyone has ever referenced or cited QGroundControl in an academic paper? I see most references in the literature refer to the user guide, like this:

QGroundControl GCS. Available online: http://www.qgroundcontrol.org/ (accessed on 15 June 2018).

I refer to it as an open source software, and I haven’t found any other conventions for citing it yet. If anyone has any recommendations please let me know! Many thanks :slight_smile:

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Hi @Teala :slight_smile:

This isn’t something I’ve looked into much, but I would assume the citation contents should depend on the way in which you interacted with the software.

As a few examples:

  1. if you were using it as a tool, where you were a standard user, then linking to the software’s website homepage and mentioning things like the version used would likely be relevant
    • This university site describes the APA format for software references, which applied to QGC would be something like

      Dronecode Project, Inc. (2024). QGroundControl - Drone Control (Version v4.4.0) [Computer software]. Dronecode Project, Inc. http://qgroundcontrol.com

  2. if you were modifying the software, or using the source code as a reference, then it would make more sense to link to the code repository, and likely mention a tag or a git hash so the same state can be checked against, e.g.

    Dronecode Project, Inc. (2024). QGroundControl - Drone Control (Tag v4.4.0rc5) [Source code]. GitHub. https://github.com/mavlink/qgroundcontrol/

  3. if you’re referring to a specific process the software includes, then it might make sense to instead make a website reference to the relevant section in the user guide
  4. if you’re referring to the development practices, you could consider a website reference to the developer guide

Hope that helps! :slight_smile:

Once your paper is published, it’d be great if you could tell us a bit about it in the Research category, in which case you might get some discussion from the community, and Blue Robotics can include the paper in the Subsea Scholar section of our website :smiley:

2 Likes
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Hi Eliot,

Thanks for this breakdown! This makes a lot of sense. Much appreciated!

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