Research Code Sharing in Support of Gold Standard Science

Sharing research code in an open access version-controlled repository offers significant benefits for both science as a whole and for individual researchers. This article focuses on this practice, which is fully aligned with the NIH's Gold Standard Science (GSS) program as well as FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) and TRUST (transparency, responsibility, user focus, sustainability, technology) principles.

Pairing a research article's cited data snapshot with a versioned, environment-specific code release, deposited in a companion code repository, ensures that, upon submission to a medical journal, readers and reviewers can directly verify results. An executable and updatable companion code repository complements, rather than replaces, established research data repositories. When code underlying medical research results is made openly available, other scientists can inspect, run, and validate analyses, which enhances reproducibility, a core aim of Gold Standard Science.