TY - JOUR
T1 - Code sharing in ecology and evolution increases citation rates but remains uncommon
AU - Maitner, Brian
AU - Santos Andrade, Paul Efren
AU - Lei, Luna
AU - Kass, Jamie
AU - Owens, Hannah L.
AU - Barbosa, George C. G.
AU - Boyle, Brad
AU - Castorena, Matiss
AU - Enquist, Brian J.
AU - Feng, Xiao
AU - Park, Daniel S.
AU - Paz, Andrea
AU - Pinilla-Buitrago, Gonzalo
AU - Merow, Cory
AU - Wilson, Adam
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - Biologists increasingly rely on computer code to collect and analyze their data, reinforcing the importance of published code for transparency, reproducibility, training, and a basis for further work. Here, we conduct a literature review estimating temporal trends in code sharing in ecology and evolution publications since 2010, and test for an influence of code sharing on citation rate. We find that code is rarely published (only 6% of papers), with little improvement over time. We also found there may be incentives to publish code: Publications that share code have tended to be low-impact initially, but accumulate citations faster, compensating for this deficit. Studies that additionally meet other Open Science criteria, open-access publication, or data sharing, have still higher citation rates, with publications meeting all three criteria (code sharing, data sharing, and open access publication) tending to have the most citations and highest rate of citation accumulation.
AB - Biologists increasingly rely on computer code to collect and analyze their data, reinforcing the importance of published code for transparency, reproducibility, training, and a basis for further work. Here, we conduct a literature review estimating temporal trends in code sharing in ecology and evolution publications since 2010, and test for an influence of code sharing on citation rate. We find that code is rarely published (only 6% of papers), with little improvement over time. We also found there may be incentives to publish code: Publications that share code have tended to be low-impact initially, but accumulate citations faster, compensating for this deficit. Studies that additionally meet other Open Science criteria, open-access publication, or data sharing, have still higher citation rates, with publications meeting all three criteria (code sharing, data sharing, and open access publication) tending to have the most citations and highest rate of citation accumulation.
KW - code sharing
KW - open access
KW - open data
KW - open science
KW - R software
KW - reproducibility
U2 - 10.1002/ece3.70030
DO - 10.1002/ece3.70030
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 39206460
AN - SCOPUS:85202214545
VL - 14
JO - Ecology and Evolution
JF - Ecology and Evolution
SN - 2045-7758
IS - 8
M1 - e70030
ER -