Software matters
A UK survey of 1,000 randomly chosen researchers showed that more than 90% of researchers acknowledged software as being important for their own research, and about 70% of researchers said that their research would not be possible without software [1]. A study of Nature papers from Jan-March 2016 reveals that “32 of the 40 papers examined mention software, and the 32 papers contain 211 mentions of distinct pieces of software, for an average of 6.5 mentions per paper.” [2].
[1] Hettrick. S. J., et al. (2014). UK Research Software Survey 2014 [Data set]. doi:10.5281/zenodo.14809
[2] Nangia, Udit; Katz, Daniel S. (2017): Understanding Software in Research: Initial Results from Examining Nature and a Call for Collaboration. doi:10.1109/eScience.2017.78
