Statnet project

statnet is a suite of R packages for the management, exploration, statistical analysis, simulation and vizualization of network data. Our statistical modeling framework relies on Exponential-family Random Graph Models (ERGMs).

Citation

If you are using the statnet packages for research that will be published or otherwise publicly distributed, we request that you acknowledge this with a citation. What to cite depends on what package(s) you are using.

Since most of the statnet component packages depend on other packages in the suite – for example, ergm depends on network and some others – most analyses will have relied on multiple packages.

If this is the case for you, we request that you acknowledge statnet with the following citation:

Statnet Development Team (Pavel N. Krivitsky, Mark S. Handcock, David R. Hunter, Carter T. Butts, Michal Bojanowski, Chad Klumb, Steven M. Goodreau, and Martina Morris) (2003-2024). statnet: Software tools for the Statistical Modeling of Network Data. URL http://statnet.org

A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is (add your own citation key):

@software{your-key-here,
  title = {Statnet:  Tools for the Statistical Modeling of Network Data},
  author = {Pavel N. Krivitsky, Mark S. Handcock and Hunter, David R. and Butts, 
    Carter T. and Bojanowski, Michal and Klumb, Chad and Goodreau, Steven M. and Morris, Martina},
  date = {2003/2024},
  url = {https://statnet.org},
  organization = {Statnet Development Team}
}

If you are only using one of the statnet packages, you can find the citation information for that component package when the library is loaded into R by using the R citation() function, e.g.:

citation('network')

Even if you are using a package like ergm that has dependencies, it’s worth checking the citation information for that specific package – it references key papers that may be relevant for your context.

License and attribution

This software is distributed under the GPL-3 license. It is free, open source, and has the following attribution requirements (GPL Section 7):

  1. you agree to retain in ‘ergm’ and any modifications to ‘ergm’ the copyright, author attribution and URL information as provided at https://statnet.org/attribution
  2. you agree that ‘ergm’ and any modifications to ‘ergm’ will, when used, display the attribution: Based on ‘statnet’ project software (https://statnet.org). For license and citation information see https://statnet.org/attribution

What does this mean?

If you are modifying statnet or adopting any source code from statnet for use in another application, you must ensure that the copyright and attributions mentioned in the license above appear in the code of your modified version or application. These attributions must also appear when the package is loaded (e.g., via library() or require()).

In addition, if you are using the statnet package or any of the component packages for research that will be published, we request that you acknowledge this with a citation (see the Citation section above).

License Information for the component packages (e.g., ergm)

The licenses for the component packages are similar to statnet. They can be found when the package library is loaded into R by using the R citation() function, e.g.:

citation('ergm')