Better incentives are needed to reward academic software development | Nature Ecology & Evolution

"Open software underpins most research today, increasing accessibility for scientists to perform state-of-the-art analyses. Positions that require programming skills have correspondingly doubled over the past decade3. The accuracy and reproducibility of scientific results is increasingly dependent on updating and maintaining software. However, the incentive structure in academia for software development — and especially maintenance — is insufficient. It is time that appropriate incentives are embraced to reflect their importance...."