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

A road map to improve software sharing practices

By Roberto Di Cosmo, Sabrina Granger, Konrad Hinsen, Nicolas Jullien, Daniel Le Berre, Violaine Louvet, Camille Maumet, Clémentine Maurice, Raphaël Monat, and Nicolas P. Rougier

Nature 2025, 646 (8084), 284–286.

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

Software is used in research all over the world. In chemistry, software is used, among other things, to analyze experimental data and predict the properties of molecules and materials. Like for other repositories of scientific knowledge, sharing software is important to ensure reproducible and reliable research. However, software does not benefit from the same level of infrastructure support or academic recognition as journal articles, books, and other knowledge repositories from the pre-digital era.

In France, under the impetus of numerous institutional players, several initiatives have been launched, but there is still a long way to go. This commentary, published in Nature by a multidisciplinary group of authors who are members of the “Software and Source Code” college of the Committee for Open Science, presents a global roadmap for actors across the entire research ecosystem, in order to improve the visibility and reusability of scientific software, and thereby its impact.