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  • COMMENT

Stop treating code like an afterthought: record, share and value it

Scientists, research institutions, funders, libraries and publishers must all improve software practices.
By
  1. Roberto Di Cosmo

    1. Roberto Di Cosmo is a computer scientist at INRIA Paris, France.

  2. Sabrina Granger

    1. Sabrina Granger is an open-science community manager at INRIA Lyon, France.

  3. Konrad Hinsen

    1. Konrad Hinsen is a molecular biophysics researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Orléans, France.

  4. Nicolas Jullien

    1. Nicolas Jullien is an economist at IMT Atlantique, Brest, France.

  5. Daniel Le Berre

    1. Daniel Le Berre is a computer scientist at Artois University, Lens, France.

  6. Violaine Louvet

    1. Violaine Louvet is a research engineer in scientific computing at the Jean Kuntzmann Laboratory, Grenoble, France.

  7. Camille Maumet

    1. Camille Maumet is a neuroinformatics researcher at INRIA, University of Rennes, France.

  8. Clémentine Maurice

    1. Clémentine Maurice is a security researcher at CNRS, University of Lille, France.

  9. Raphaël Monat

    1. Raphaël Monat is a computer scientist at INRIA, University of Lille, France.

  10. Nicolas P. Rougier

    1. Nicolas P. Rougier is a computational neuroscientist and open-source developer at INRIA, University of Bordeaux, France.

A stylised illustration showing three scientists tending to a tree made up of digital network lines for the trunk and branches and code and data for the leaves and foliage.

Illustration: Phil Wheeler

From short scripts to vast simulations of Earth’s climate, protein structures or even the cosmos, it is hard to imagine scientific research without software. Scientists use software code in myriad ways — to plan experiments; to record, organize, analyse, visualize and archive data; to control scientific instruments, and more.

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Nature 646, 284-286 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-03196-0

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Supplementary Information

  1. Recommendations for software developers and users

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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