Advancing code sharing in the computational biology community
Abstract
On March 30, 2021, a new code sharing policy was introduced at PLOS Computational Biology [1].This policy requires any code supporting a publication to be shared unless there are ethical or legal restrictions that prevent sharing.The policy was introduced in response to community desire for a stronger position on code sharing to reflect the fact that the majority of the community already voluntarily share code [2,3].This community-driven support for open science practices aligns well with the PLOS mission, and, therefore, the implementation of the new policy was a logical progression for the journal.The policy focuses on increasing code sAU : Pleasenotet haring as its primary aim, which, in turn, will support reproducibility, and so is not prescriptive to authors about how or where to share their code.The policy (https://journals.plos.org/ ploscompbiol/s/code-availability) allows authors to comply in ways which work for them.By the end of the first year of the policy, we expected to see an increase in code sharing rates (the percentage of published research articles that share code) without any negative impact on the publishing demographics or the author, editor, and journal staff experiences.This Editorial reports on the impact of policy over the first 12 months, provides a longitudinal view of code sharing in the journal since 2019, and articulates how this effort can move forward to enhance further sharing, reproducibility, and openness.
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