Open Research software and code
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What is open software?
Open software involves making the software and code used and created in the research process as open as possible to enable the research to be replicated, validated and further built upon by other researchers.
Sharing software and code
The sharing of research software and code can take the form of open source software, open code and executable books such as Jupyter Notebooks, and uses platforms such as GitHub for storage and discoverability. The University has a dedicated GitHub space.
If you would like your software to be in a more citable format, consider platforms such as Figshare or Zenodo which have useful integration with GitHub and allow you to assign a DOI to a particular version of your software.
As well as sharing the software publicly it is often a good idea to publish a software paper to ensure you get appropriate credit for your software. The Software Sustainability Institute has created a list of journals that accept software papers.
You can find more information on sharing software and code on our ‘Sharing outputs throughout the research lifecycle’ resource.
Benefits of open software
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Improves reproducibility and transparency of computational analysis
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Can increase collaboration across disciplines and institutions, enabling researchers to build on each other’s work and innovate more effectively
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Reduces duplication of effort by allowing researchers to use existing tools and focus on advancing their research rather than developing new software
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Enables acknowledgement and crediting of researchers and developers of open research software and code (such as by using the CRediT taxonomy)
More information
The Software Sustainability Institute, with which The University of Manchester collaborates, provides support and advocates for more sustainable research software.
Software Carpentry, within The Carpentries programme is an invaluable source of information on the fundamental programming skills needed to conduct research.
The University of Manchester Research IT provides support and training on research IT systems and information about emerging computational platforms and environments. The Manchester Research Software Community provides community, support and best practice for research IT users.
Find out more about the importance of crediting software and code creators in research and the CRediT taxonomy.