The documentation of scientific software should often contain an acknowledgments section that gives credit to the funders that supported work on the software.

Many funders will require such acknowledgments and provide specific guidelines about what form they should take. (See, e.g., the NSF’s policies.) In other cases, an acknowledgment may not be formally required, but it’s hard to see a downside to acknowledging generously. But if a work was truly created without any external support, you can skip the acknowledgments section.

Your acknowledgments section should also, of course, include any other recognitions that you deem necessary and/or appropriate.

For most software, the acknowledgment statement will be short, and it needs not live on its own page.

Spelling

You can spell “acknowledgment” either with or without a third “e” after the “g”. Various clickbaity sources online suggest that the version with two “e”s is generally preferred in North America, and three “e”s elsewhere. The difference is subtle enough that you should probably feel safe using whichever version you prefer.

Acknowledging One Good Tutorial

If you found this resource useful during the preparation of your software’s documentation, you are encouraged — but not obligated — to mention it in your acknowledgments section. A suggested statement is:

These materials were initially prepared following version 1.0 of the One Good Tutorial software documentation checklist.

TKTK: Add a DOI citation once we’re deposited!