Susie is a composites researcher who has used ImageJ to process her microCT images. Should she cite the software?

She doesn’t know so she uses the workflow in the chart:

1. Does ImageJ ask that it should be cited?

She doesn’t know so follows the ‘I don’t know’ path.

There is no CITATION file so she checks the README which also does not contain information on how to cite. The website doesn’t show anything obvious so she does a search for ‘citing imagej’ which takes her to FAQ page giving the following information:

Here are three possible ways to reference ImageJ:

1. Rasband, W.S., ImageJ, U. S. National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA, http://imagej.nih.gov/ij/, 1997-2015.
2. Schneider, C.A., Rasband, W.S., Eliceiri, K.W. "NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis". Nature Methods 9, 671-675, 2012.
3. Abramoff, M.D., Magalhaes, P.J., Ram, S.J. "Image Processing with ImageJ". Biophotonics International, volume 11, issue 7, pp. 36-42, 2004. (This article is available as a PDF http://rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/docs/pdfs/Image_Processing_with_ImageJ.pdf)

The paper in #2 has a link to the software, and has a DOI, so it is the best citation. Susie uses this citation for ImageJ.