Software Impacts : Code for research

Software Impacts is a multidisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed journal which publishes short, articles that describe software which addresses a research challenge. The journal describes the application of impactful and re-usable software and provides a scholarly reference. Publications in Software Impacts consist of two parts:

• A short descriptive paper of approximately three pages, including an Impact Overview statement and references to scholarly publications where the software has been used
• Open source software with support material

• Accessible - immediately and freely available to download and read with open access, giving readers easy access to software and related research articles
• Discoverable - easy to share your software article and your software with other researchers, ensuring it is accessible outside your domain
• Citable - drive traffic to and from your software and related publications with linking and referencing
• Comprehensible - a software article that is easy to digest and interpret
• Reviewed - ensure quality publication with expert peer-review
• Reproducible - easier for your peers to re-use your software, saving valuable time and resources.


• Software submitted to Software Impacts for consideration is verified and certified for computational reproducibility by the CodeOcean, a cloud based computational reproducibility platform that helps the community by enabling sharing of code and data as a resource for non-commercial use. Certified papers will be given additional exposure by receiving a Reproducibility Badge, and by being listed on the CodeOcean website.

Software Impacts welcomes submissions from all areas of science, as well as submissions which cover interdisciplinary research. Software submitted for consideration must have contributed to scientific research, with the outputs published in at least one scholarly, peer-reviewed article.

The Editorial Team assesses the originality and quality of submitted software via published results. Such results are considered reliable if they have been published in a peer-reviewed, scholarly publication. The Editors of Software Impacts review the Impact Statement with the assistance of subject matter experts using single blind peer-review process.

Software discussed in Software Impacts must adhere to a recognized legal license, such as the OSI-approved licenses and submissions are only considered if the code/software has been made freely available.