Software in the scientific literature: Problems with seeing, finding, and using software mentioned in the biology literature.
Software is increasingly crucial to scholarship, yet the visibility and usefulness of software in the scientific record are in question. Just as with data, the visibility of software in publications is related to incentives to share software in reusable ways, and so promote efficient science. In thi...
| Publicado en: | Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology Vol. 67; no. 9; pp. 2137 - 2156 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Wiley-Blackwell
Sep2016
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=117603450&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 117603450 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 23301635 H6JN jtl: Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology issn: 23301635 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Sep2016 vid: 67 iid: 9 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell place: Malden, Massachusetts artinfo: ui: 117603450 117603450 117603450 10.1002/asi.23538 117603450 ppf: 2137 ppct: 19 formats: tig: atl: Software in the scientific literature: Problems with seeing, finding, and using software mentioned in the biology literature. aug: au: Howison, James Bullard, Julia affil: School of Information, University of Texas at Austin, 1616 Guadalupe Street, Austin TX, 78701, USA sug: subj: Software Biology Information Retrieval Scholarship Human Citation Analysis Coding Journal Impact Factor Confidence Intervals Funding Source ab: Software is increasingly crucial to scholarship, yet the visibility and usefulness of software in the scientific record are in question. Just as with data, the visibility of software in publications is related to incentives to share software in reusable ways, and so promote efficient science. In this article, we examine software in publications through content analysis of a random sample of 90 biology articles. We develop a coding scheme to identify software 'mentions' and classify them according to their characteristics and ability to realize the functions of citations. Overall, we find diverse and problematic practices: Only between 31% and 43% of mentions involve formal citations; informal mentions are very common, even in high impact factor journals and across different kinds of software. Software is frequently inaccessible (15%-29% of packages in any form; between 90% and 98% of specific versions; only between 24%-40% provide source code). Cites to publications are particularly poor at providing version information, whereas informal mentions are particularly poor at providing crediting information. We provide recommendations to improve the practice of software citation, highlighting recent nascent efforts. Software plays an increasingly great role in scientific practice; it deserves a clear and useful place in scholarly communication. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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