Should I provide references to a function which is used as part of a programming language?

Question

I am writing a paper, which in the application used a function from a programming language (in this case, it is OpenCV function canny edge detection). When is or is not appropriate to explain the algorithm in mathematics/words and when or how should a function be referenced.

In this case, OpenCV explains the algorithm http://docs.opencv.org/doc/tutorials/imgproc/imgtrans/canny_detector/canny_detector.html

Should I just provide a link to this, as I did not modify the algorithm but it is an important part of the implementation decision.

Is there a standard way of deciding to reference the language, function, or original algorithm?

Answer 1

In this case I would opt to cite the paper in which Canny edge detection was introduced. Citing OpenCV as a whole is more appropriate than referring to a specific function, e.g. "we obtained our results using OpenCV [Bradski00]". Since you use OpenCV, you should also cite the related paper.

I would only refer to a specific function in a software package if it does not implement a known algorithm and therefore requires special attention.

Answer 2

Sometimes I see a reference to a particular function in a given library, and I consider it a great practice.

If the problem has various algorithms, or algorithms have various implementations (differing by technical details, numerical precision, etc) explicitly mentioning package will help the reader. I don't see a reason to conceal it.

For me:

• BAD: "We performed edge detection." (How? Magic!).
• OK: "We obtained our results using OpenCV [Bradski00]" (There may be more ways to do it, so happy guessing game for anyone trying to reimplement this.)
• BETTER: "We performed edge detection with canny from OpenCV package [cit], which implements algorithm_name [cit]."
• BEST: "We performed edge detection with canny from OpenCV package [cit], which implements algorithm_name [cit]. Full code is available at http://..."