Analysis of publisher policies on code sharing

At the 19th Research Data Alliance Plenary (June 2022), a Birds of a Feather session was convened to discuss aspects of code sharing and investigate if there was a consensus on which aspect of code sharing the community should be a focus of attention. The group, which included publishers, institutions, researchers and infrastructure providers, agreed to focus on "code" (i.e., "single use" or "one-shot", often referred to as "analysis code") that usually accompanies published articles and increasing the availability of this code. Note that this refers to a specific context in which "source code" is created and not "code" more generally.

Following this session, a Research Software Alliance task force on code availability was convened and three group members carried out a high level landscape analysis of publisher policies around code sharing using the CHORUS Publisher Data Availability Policies Index to gather a list of publishers. After feedback from other group members a more comprehensive analysis of the policies was carried out. Publisher policies were assessed for the presence of language related to code sharing and, if present, it was subsequently characterised. Coding of the policies and associated language was carried out independently by all three authors and a consensus derived. Details are given on the README tab of the dataset.