Citing PCT and the algorithms used therein

Please cite PCT as the following (all authors after K. C. Hall are listed alphabetically):

Hall, Kathleen Currie, Blake Allen, Michael Fry, Scott Mackie, and Michael McAuliffe. (2015). Phonological CorpusTools, Version 1.1. [Computer program]. Available from PCT GitHub page.

If you need to cite a more traditional academic source rather than the software itself, please use:

Mackie, Scott, Kathleen Currie Hall, Blake Allen, Michael McAuliffe, Michael Fry. (2014). Phonological CorpusTools: A free, open-source tool for phonological analysis. Presented at the 14th Conference for Laboratory Phonology, Tokyo, Japan.

If you are using the IPHOD corpus as distributed with PCT, please also be sure to cite:

Vaden, K. I., Halpin, H. R., Hickok, G. S. (2009). Irvine Phonotactic Online Dictionary, Version 2.0. [Data file]. Available from http://www.iphod.com.

and if you are making use of the SUBTLEX token frequencies as part of the IPHOD corpus, you should cite:

Brysbaert, Marc, & Boris New. (2009). Moving beyond Kučera and Francis: A critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English. Behavior Research Methods 41(4): 977-990.

More generally, the algorithms that are implemented in PCT are taken from published sources. As mentioned in the introduction, we highly encourage users of PCT to cite the original sources of the algorithms rather than, for example, saying that “functional load was calculated using PCT” and just citing PCT itself. First, there are multiple parameters within PCT that can be selected for any given calculation, and these should themselves be specified for maximum clarity and replicability. Second, credit for the original creation or application of the algorithms should obviously be given to the proper sources. We have attempted to make this as easy as possible by both giving these sources here in the user’s manual and also embedding them in each function in the “About” option for each.

Furthermore, if you are the author of a function that is currently implemented in PCT and you disagree with the way in which it has been implemented, please contact us to let us know! We have done our best to faithfully replicate published descriptions, but it is obviously possible that we have made errors.

Finally, if you are the author of a function that you would like to see implemented in PCT, please contact us to discuss the possibility.