Tracking research software outputs in the UK

2025-07-30

AI Summary

This study presents the first systematic assessment of registration and sharing practices for publicly funded research software in the UK, revealing critical challenges: low traceability, poor sharing rates, and severe link rot (45% of URLs invalid or missing). Methodologically, we analyzed metadata from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Gateway to Research (GtR) database, complemented by automated URL validation, platform-specific classification, and hosting-source attribution. Results indicate that software outputs are markedly underreported relative to other research outputs; only 18% are hosted on GitHub, and 25% lack any accessible links. The findings expose a significant policy implementation gap and an absence of dedicated stewardship for research software as scientific infrastructure. This work provides empirical evidence and a foundational benchmark to inform the development of robust research software management frameworks—enhancing long-term reusability, sustainability, and preservation of computational research assets.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Representing, Reasoning, and Using Provenance, Trust
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Computational Complexity of Reasoning

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data provenance, reliability, and authenticity
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

Research software is crucial in the research process and the growth of Open Science underscores the importance of accessing research artifacts, like data and code, raising traceability challenges among outputs. While it is a clear principle that research code, along with other essential outputs, should be recognised as artifacts of the research process, the how of this principle remains variable. This study examines where UK academic institutions store and register software as a unique research output, searching the UKRI's Gateway to Research (GtR) metadata for publicly funded research software in the UK. The quantity of software reported as research outcomes remains low in proportion to other categories. Artifact sharing appears low, with one-quarter of the reported software having no links and 45% having either a missing or erroneous URL. Of the valid URLs, we find the single largest category is Public Commercial Code Repository, with GitHub being the host of 18% of all publicly funded research software listed. These observations are contrasted with past findings from 2023 and finally, we discuss the lack of artifact sharing in UK research, with resulting implications for the maintenance and evolution of research software. Without dissemination, research software risks demotion to a transient artifact, useful only to meet short term research demands but ultimately lost to the broader enterprise of science.

Problem

• Tracking and storing UK research software outputs effectively
• Low artifact sharing and URL errors in research software
• Ensuring long-term accessibility of research software for science

Innovation

• Analyzing UKRI's GtR metadata for software tracking
• Identifying low artifact sharing in UK research
• Highlighting GitHub as primary code repository host