Do I need to reference matlab in an academic paper?

HElP!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm writing an academic paper. Some figures in it are plotted by MATLAB. So, do I need to reference MATLAB at the end? If yes, how?

[sally]

i need to reference a map (originated mathworks.com) that I found in an academic journal, ie not genereated by me

. How do I go about this?

Harvard referencing.

thank you

[the cyclist]

Your wording is unclear. Is the map in the academic journal, or is it on a MathWorks page?

If it is in the journal, you cite the journal. If it is on a MathWorks page, then cite the MathWorks page, using the guidance in this answer from the MW support team.

(Also, in the future, I suggest opening a new question, rather than appending to a 4-year-old question. I realize your question is closely related, but very very few people will see it buried in an old question. It was lucky that I noticed it.)

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

The most common thing I have seen is to state the software and version used (e.g. MATLAB ver. R2018b), within the Methods section somewhere.

If you want to reference specific functions, then you could use the suggestion from the Support Team in this answer.

Answer 2

[Rik]

That depends a bit on the context and the journal. You can ask your supervisor what they think. Personally I also do some parts of the analysis with Matlab, so I use it for more than just plotting. In such cases I use the information below in my LaTeX biblography. Depending on your citation manager you can probably import this (save as a text file with .bib instead of .txt).

@manual{MATLAB:2017b,
  address = {Natick, Massachusetts},
  organization = {The Mathworks, Inc.},
  title = {{MATLAB version 9.3.0.713579 (R2017b)}},
  year = {2017}
}

Don't forget to change the version to whatever the version function returns.

Alternatively, you can also run the code below to autmatically generate the .bib file from within Matlab.

v=version;
rel=ver;rel=rel(1).Release;
rel=strrep(strrep(rel,'(',''),')','');
if numel(rel)==6
    year=rel(2:5);
else
    year=ver('MATLAB');year=year.Date(8:end);
end
idx=strfind(v,'Update');
if ~isempty(idx)
    idx=idx(end)+numel('Update ');
    rel=sprintf('%s_u%s',rel,v(idx:end));
end
bib_file_name=sprintf('matlab_cite_key_%s.bib',rel);
lines=cell(6,1);
lines{1}=sprintf('@manual{MATLAB:%s,',rel);
lines{2}='  address = {Natick, Massachusetts},';
lines{3}='  organization = {The Mathworks, Inc.},';
lines{4}=sprintf('  title = {{MATLAB version %s}},',v);
lines{5}=sprintf('  year = {%s},',year);
lines{6}='}';
fid=fopen(bib_file_name,'w');
for n=1:numel(lines)
    fprintf(fid,'%s\n',lines{n});
end
fclose(fid);