Ecology journals have alarmingly low code availability. We urgently need to increase it.
(1) So what, who cares?
Science and scientific research methods need to be open and transparent. Ecologists, like most scientists, use computer code to process raw data, do statistical analysis, simulate models, and create figures. Sharing code and data publicly helps others understand analyses, evaluate conclusions, and reuse code for future analyses. Scientists need understand each other's work and be able to verify it independently. That's how science moves ahead and the world moves forward.
(2) Study
Authors studied a random sample of 400 articles published between June 2015 and May 2019 in 14 ecological journals. As of June 2015, journals had either a mandatory code-sharing policy or encouraged authors to make their code available upon publication.
(3) Findings
Only 27% of articles had either all or some of the code that was central to the results. 79% had data available. It means that the lack of code-availability is severely limiting other scientists from reproducing results. Just over half (51%) made their code available for online code repositories.
(4) Now what?
Journals, institutions, funding agencies - Code-sharing should be a rule, not an option. Enforce it, not merely encourage it. Authors - take advantage of journals providing free archiving of data and code in digital repositories. Access to code should be essential and obligatory part of publication in ecology.
This summary was adapted from the original article:
Low availability of code in ecology: A call for urgent action