IEEE Citation Guide

Source code is "the statements written by the programmer, which are translated into the computer's 'machine language' by programs called 'assemblers', 'compilers' and 'interpreters'." (Source)

There are two elements associated with source code:

Ask your instructor if you can reuse code for an assignment!

WARNING! Reusing a colleague's code or assignment, or reusing code from an assignment you produced for another course (= self-plagiarism), constitutes fraud according to Polytechnique's Règlements des études du baccalauréat en ingénierie, art. M7 b) and k).

Open source licenses allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared.

Check the license under which the code was published to see if you have the right to reuse it.

Licenses in GitHub

If a GitHub repository has no license, the Copyright Law applies by default and the author retains all rights. This means that no one can reuse the code without the author's permission.

⚊⚊> List of licenses in GitHub

See the full list.

⚊⚊> Example

 

License in Stack Overflow

Creative Commons licenses

IEEE is a numerical style that comprises two mandatory elements:

1. In-text citation [1], numbered in the order of appearance in the text;
2. Reference for the source [1] in the reference list. See Examples of references in this guide. The format of a reference depends on the type of document (here, an e-book with DOI): 

Source code from websites and documents with a URL

Note: Writing comments in the code depends on the programming language: /*, #, //, etc.

Note: For some instructors and professors, it could be enough to only include the citation [citation number] and the URL for the source in the code: /* Beginning of code from [citation number] http://...*/ ……… /* End of code from [citation number] */ ...without including the reference for the source [citation number] in the document accompanying the code (assignment, report, etc.).

⚊⚊> Source code from Stack Overflow

1. Citation and URL for the source in your code:
/* Beginning of code from [1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/50545530 */
…….
/* End of code from [1] */

2. Reference for the web page [1] in your assignment, report, etc.:

L. Elrom. (2018) Binary search in Javascript (ES6). [Online]. Available: https://stackoverflow.com/a/50545530

⚊⚊> Code in Java from an electronic book

1. Citation and URL for the source in your code:
/* Beginning of code from [1] https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/ lib/polymtl-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5997313 */
…….
/* End of code from [1] */
2. Reference for book section [1] (see Section without title of an electronic book and Chapter in an edited electronic book under Examples of references in this guide) in your assignment, report, etc.:

V. Sarcar, “Nested class,” in Interactive Object-Oriented Programming in Java: Learn and Test Your Programming Skills, 2nd ed. Bangalore, India: Apress, 2019, pp. 47-49. [Online]. Available: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/polymtl-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5997313

⚊⚊> Algorithm in Python found on the Internet

1. Citation and URL for the source in your code:
# Beginning of code from [3] http://...#
………
# End of code from [3] #

2. Reference for web page [3] in the document accompanying the code (ex.: an assignment)

[3]	GeeksforGeeks. (2022) Python program for bubble sort. [Online]. Available: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/python-program-for-bubble-sort/

⚊⚊> Source code found on the Internet that you have modified for an assignment

1. Citation and URL for the source in your code:
/* The following lines were adapted from [7] http://... */
……
/* End of code adapted from [7] */
2. Reference for source [7] in the document accompanying the code (ex.: assignment, report, etc.)

If necessary, add further details on how you modified the code.

Source code from documents with no URL

Do not cite common facts (= common knowledge), but when in doubt, ask your professor and/or cite!

Ex. of common knowledge: using function calls from an internal or external software library (code library) such as:

• The list internal library in C++

 

• The Pandas external library in Python