Publishing research software comprises more than just putting the code online into a public code repository such as GitHub or Gitlab. While it is a great start, publishing software may involve additional steps to prepare you software so others can find, understand, use, and cite it.
Tasks to consider when publishing your software include:
- writing release notes, a changelog, documentation and usage instructions,
- adding metadata for discoverability, and ensuring reproducibility by capturing dependencies and environments (through containers, environment files, or workflow systems),
- choosing and applying an appropriate open licence,
- adding citation files, contribution guidelines, and community practices to support reuse and credit,
- versioning and releasing a stable, usable and installable version of your software (e.g. as a “package” in a package registry or by tagging a specific version as an official release in code repositories),
- archiving the release (e.g. on Zenodo or Software Heritage) with a DOI.
This is the suggested order in which you should look at the related sub-tasks.
tasks
How do you document your software (code and project) for use by various different audiences?
Editor
The University of Manchester / Software Sustainability Institute