Research Software Publication Policy Case Study

TL;DR

This paper analyzes publication policies for research software across 20 Physical Science journals, highlighting differences and proposing a new survey method to improve software publication standards.

Contribution

It provides a case study of software publication policies and introduces a novel survey approach for analyzing these policies across scientific domains.

Findings

Journals differ in software archiving and verification requirements

Descriptive statistics reveal variability in publication criteria

The new survey method enables comparative policy analysis

Abstract

Research software is increasingly recognized as a vital component of the scholarly record. Journals offer authors the opportunity to publish research software papers, but often have different requirements for how these publications should be structured and how code should be verified. In this short case study we gather data from 20 Physical Science journals to trace the frequency, quality control, and publishing criteria for software papers. Our goal with the case study is to provide a proof-of-concept for doing descriptive empirical work with software publication policies across numerous domains of science and engineering. In the narrative we therefore provide descriptive statistics showing how these journals differ in criteria required for archiving, linking, verifying, and documenting software as part of a formal publication. The contribution of this preliminary work is twofold: 1. We provide case study of Physical Science research software publications over time; 2. We demonstrate the use of a new survey method for analyzing research software publication policies. In our conclusion, we describe how comparative research into software publication policies can provide better criteria and requirements for an emerging software publication landscape.