Ten (or more!) reasons to register your software with the Astrophysics Source Code Library

TL;DR

Registering astronomy research software with the Astrophysics Source Code Library enhances visibility, reproducibility, and citation tracking, benefiting researchers and the scientific community.

Contribution

This paper advocates for registering astronomy software with the ASCL, highlighting its benefits and providing a straightforward submission process.

Findings

Over 3600 codes registered in ASCL

Entries cited over 17,000 times

Registration improves software discoverability and citation

Abstract

This presentation covered the benefits of registering astronomy research software with the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL, ascl.net), a free online registry for software used in astronomy research. Indexed by ADS and Clarivate's Web of Science, the ASCL currently contains over 3600 codes, and its entries have been cited over 17,000 times. Registering your code with the ASCL is easy with our online submissions system. Making your software available for examination shows confidence in your research and makes your research more transparent, reproducible, and falsifiable. ASCL registration allows your software to be cited on its own merits and provides a citation method that is trackable and accepted by all astronomy journals, and by journals such as \textit{Science} and \textit{Nature}. Adding your code to the ASCL also allows others to find your code more easily, as it can then be found not only in the ASCL itself, but also in ADS, Web of Science, and Google Scholar.