As Open Code – alongside research data – is an important element of quality assurance and reproducibility of published scientific results, it is also of interest to science policy. 

The German Research Foundation (DFG) sees the documentation of the source code of research software as a requirement for digital scientific practice in its code of “Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice“. In addition, researchers should – whenever possible – make the specific research data and central materials accessible in recognised archives and repositories following the FAIR principles GLOSSAR-EINTRAG (EN). Self-developed research software should be published under an appropriate licence. By the way: In funding proposals to the DFG, software can be listed as a research output in the CV.

In addition to free access to scientific publications and research data, the European Commission’s Horizon Europe framework programme (PDF) states that all tools that have been used and that are required for the reuse of published research data should be made publicly available.

The goal should be that research software – beyond the field of Open Code – should be published via Open Source as open research software, especially if its development was publicly funded. Open research software is also an important topic in science policy in that it allows the role of software development as a research output to be recognised and made more visible. 

Open Code and research software also play a vital role in movements such as COARA for the further development of research assessment. The aim is to include them in the context of the research assessment diversification and the consideration of different research outputs.