# Add citations for official Rust books

**URL:** <https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/add-citations-for-official-rust-books/24507>\
**Category:** documentation\
**Created:** [August 5, 2026, 8:28am UTC](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/add-citations-for-official-rust-books/24507 "2026-08-05T08:28:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Evian-Zhang](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/internals.rust-lang.org/evian-zhang/32/12170_2.png) [@Evian-Zhang](https://internals.rust-lang.org/u/Evian-Zhang)\
**Post date:** [August 5, 2026, 8:28am UTC](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/add-citations-for-official-rust-books/24507/1 "2026-08-05T08:28:39Z")

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The official Rust books, including _The Rust Programming Language_, _The Rustonomicon_, etc., have been important sources for recent academic papers related to Rust (as shown in [google scholar](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=12397985953995368610&as_sdt=5,48&sciodt=0,48&hl=en), TRPL has been cited over 800+). However, these books lack standard citations, while GitHub has provided [Citation files](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/managing-your-repositorys-settings-and-features/customizing-your-repository/about-citation-files) as a standard way for a repo-hosted book to declare the citations. By adding a `CITATION.cff` file at the root of repo, there will be a button in the GitHub web that will generate citations in bibtex or apa format.

With this file, we can also add this features to mdBook, let it parse the citation file and render the generated bibtex or apa format in the HTML output.

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**Author:** ![carols10cents](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/internals.rust-lang.org/carols10cents/32/98_2.png) [@carols10cents](https://internals.rust-lang.org/u/carols10cents)\
**Post date:** [August 6, 2026, 6:17pm UTC](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/add-citations-for-official-rust-books/24507/2 "2026-08-06T18:17:36Z")

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I've never created a CITATION.cff file before, but if you send a PR to TRPL, I'll take a look!

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**Author:** ![Evian-Zhang](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/internals.rust-lang.org/evian-zhang/32/12170_2.png) [@Evian-Zhang](https://internals.rust-lang.org/u/Evian-Zhang)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2026, 1:27am UTC](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/add-citations-for-official-rust-books/24507/3 "2026-08-07T01:27:21Z")

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I'm afraid that I'm not capable of determining the content of CITATION.cff file. For example, what the author field should be? Considering [rustc-dev-guide/CITATION.cff](https://github.com/rust-lang/rustc-dev-guide/blob/main/CITATION.cff) and [nomicon/CITATION.cff](https://github.com/rust-lang/nomicon/blob/master/CITATION.cff) listed "The Rust Project Developers" as authors, while TRPL has stated clear authors in [title page](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/title-page.html). Also, which date should be the release date? The rustc-dev-guide and nomicon chose a rather old date, while I saw several releases have been published in TRPL.

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**Author:** ![carols10cents](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/internals.rust-lang.org/carols10cents/32/98_2.png) [@carols10cents](https://internals.rust-lang.org/u/carols10cents)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2026, 8:55pm UTC](https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/add-citations-for-official-rust-books/24507/4 "2026-08-09T20:55:41Z")

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Yeah I'm not sure what people are typically citing. There have been 3 print editions of TRPL, and the online version.