Elevating research software: A new era in international policy

Last updated on Aug 15, 2025 Blog

My Image

By Kim Hartley & Michelle Barker

Research software and the people who support it have emerged over the past decade from behind the scenes to become a recognised cornerstone of open science. Research software is now commonly recognised as central to the global research ecosystem, on par with data, publications, and hardware. Ongoing international efforts are also starting to offer practical guidance that support implementation of these policies.

In response to the recognition of research software as a vital component of the research ecosystem, the OECD’s Committee for Scientific and Technological Policies (CSTP) is launching a new project aimed at understanding the achievements and policy gaps concerning access to research software. This emphasis, alongside initiatives like ReSA’s Research Software Policy (RSP) Forum, marks a clear shift from high-level vision to coordinated, practical implementation.

New OECD project on access to research software

The OECD’s 2025-2026 project on research software builds on recent developments across OECD countries, where research software has gained substantial policy support and is now widely acknowledged as a core research output. Initiatives across funding, assessment, and infrastructure have increasingly promoted the sustainability, development, and openness of scientific software, sometimes extending beyond general open science policies.

The OECD project includes a hybrid workshop in Paris this September – Access to Research Software: Opportunities and Challenges – that will bring together national policymakers and international experts to address key issues such as governance, infrastructure, sustainability, and the role of public-private partnerships in accessing research software. This workshop marks an important step in shaping a shared policy agenda for research software within the broader open science landscape.

Research Software Policy (RSP) Forum

Complementing the OECD’s recent work, ReSA recently launched the Research Software Policy (RSP) Forum, a new initiative that brings together policymakers who recognise the vital role of research software and its developers and maintainers in modern research. With participants from national, regional, and international bodies, it provides a collaborative space to share best practices, align policies, and address shared challenges. The RSP Forum aims to accelerate policy development and alignment to support research software through integration with broader research, open science, and open source strategies.

The inaugural meeting brought together representatives from a range of international and national government policy bodies, such as the OECD; Austrian Science Fund (FWF); Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC); Dutch Research Council (NWO); Ecuadorian Corporation for the Development of Research and the Academy (CEDIA); Japan’s National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP); Lero, the Research Ireland Centre for Software; UK Research and Innovation (UKRI); and US National Institutes of Health (NIH). It also included regional initiatives focused on research software policy, such as the European Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence (EVERSE), and consortia of research and funding organisations like Science Europe and the Latin American Network for Open Science (LA Referencia). Alan Paic, Senior Policy Analyst at the OECD, delivered a presentation on the organisation’s work in open science, with an emphasis on open software.

Evolving international policy: Growing recognition and support for research software

Key international policy bodies like the OECD and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) have taken decisive steps to elevate the status of research software. In 2021, the OECD revised its Recommendation of the Council concerning Access to Research Data from Public Funding to formally include research software – defining it to encompass code, algorithms, and workflows – and encouraging countries to develop supportive policies, citation standards, and professional pathways for software developers. That same year, UNESCO released its Recommendation on Open Science – adopted by 194 countries – which explicitly includes software and source code among the key elements of open science, alongside open research data, open hardware, scientific publications, and open educational resources. This international policy work has laid the groundwork for further national and institutional reforms and inspired efforts such as the Amsterdam Declaration on Funding Research Software Sustainability (ADORE.software) and the addition of software into open science strategies worldwide.

This international policy recognition is now translating into action. Some OECD countries are overtly recognising research software in funding programs and digital infrastructure strategies, and taking early steps towards broadening research assessment frameworks to include it. These efforts reflect a growing awareness that research software is not only vital for modern research, but also central to the future of AI-driven research, which depends on sustained investment in the software ecosystem and its supporting communities.

In 2024, the signatories of the OECD’s Declaration on Transformative Science, Technology and Innovation Policies for a Sustainable and Inclusive Future committed to advancing open science principles and practices for data management and stewardship. This shift has helped to further legitimise research software’s role in research ecosystems, reinforcing the idea that research software is a first-class output of research deserving of sustained support.

Building on these foundations, the OECD recently released its Access to research data from public funding toolkit. Structured around seven pillars designed to promote open access and reuse of publicly funded research data and digital research objects, the toolkit prominently features research software as a cross-cutting priority. The toolkit highlights research software as an essential component across multiple pillars, especially in relation to responsibility, ownership, and stewardship; incentives and rewards; sustainable infrastructures; and human capital. It recommends recognising software as a key research output by adopting open licensing, integrating software into research assessments, and requiring Data Management Plans (DMPs) that include software. The toolkit also emphasises the importance of investing in Research Software Engineers (RSEs) and creating attractive, sustainable career paths for them. Policies should promote permissive licenses and open-source sharing, with compliance tied to funding conditions. Additional software-related recommendations are also included.

See the appendix for our summary of the toolkit’s focus on research software and relevant case studies.

National policies that support research software

Since ReSA’s earlier blog post profiling national research software policies, momentum has continued to grow – an encouraging trend that ReSA regularly highlights in its newsletter. Several new policies have emerged recently, reflecting the growing global recognition of research software as a critical component of open science. Notable examples include France’s Second French Plan for Open Science, Serbia’s Open Science Platform 2.0, Canada’s National Research Software Strategy, and Finland’s Policy for Open Research Data and Methods, among others.

These national initiatives demonstrate the increasing commitment of governments to formally recognise and support research software as a core contributor to research and innovation. As more countries take action, sharing and learning from one another’s approaches becomes increasingly important. ReSA invites contributions to its growing list of national policies that support research software.

Get involved in shaping the future of research software policy

Are you a national, regional or international policymaker?
Join the RSP Forum – a global space for advancing policy for research software. Contact ReSA to become a member and help drive meaningful change.

Represent an institution or funder?
Contribute your insights and examples to support the OECD’s ongoing work and amplify the visibility of national efforts. Ways to engage:

Acknowledgements

ReSA has been supported to undertake this work as part of Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant 2024-22426, Research Software Alliance: Catalyzing community-led collaborations.

Image credit: Unsplash

Appendix: Summary of OECD Access to research data from public funding toolkit

Useful references to research software/code occur in sections including the following

1. Data governance for trust

  • Recommendation: Establish coordinated policies to maximise open access and reuse of publicly funded research data and digital objects, while respecting necessary access restrictions for legitimate interests.
  • Software-specific action: Policies should promote permissive licensing (e.g., Creative Commons (CC) BY 4.0) and open-source software sharing while enforcing compliance through funding conditions.

2. Technical standards and practices

  • Recommendation: Promote and, where appropriate, require compliance with technical standards and practices that ensure publicly funded research data and digital objects are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR).
  • Software-specific action: This pillar aligns with the FAIR principles and open technical standards by promoting the assignment of Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) to software, workflows, and algorithms; encouraging open technical standards and open-source approaches; and maintaining and curating codebases and ensuring long-term usability of software.

3. Responsibility, ownership, and stewardship

  • Recommendation: Ensure clear roles and responsibilities for managing access to publicly funded research data and research-relevant digital objects, while tailoring licensing and intellectual property rights to balance innovation with the protection of producers’ rights.
  • Software-specific actions:
    • Require Data Management Plans (DMPs) that include software.
    • Promote training and formal recognition of research software management skills.
    • Ensure open access terms in public-private partnerships.
  • Challenges: Effective research data and software management is hindered by limited awareness, incentives, standardisation, and infrastructure, along with undervalued stewardship skills and complex legal, technical, and governance challenges—requiring coordinated leadership, harmonised policies, and sustained investment.
  • The OECD’s Data and Software Management (Article V.1) promotes good practices for managing research data and software across the research ecosystem, calling for collaboration among researchers, institutions, repositories, funders, and others.

4. Incentives and rewards

  • Recommendation: Recognise and reward software contributions in research assessments.
  • Software-specific actions:
    • Research impact assessments should explicitly recognise data and software publications, supported by robust citation tracking, bibliometric measures, and discipline-specific impact standards.
    • Article VI.1 recommends supporting open impact indicators, tracking software citations, using approaches like contributor taxonomies to credit all research roles, and promoting citation standards to make data and software citation a publishing requirement by funders.
  • Challenges: Current evaluation systems prioritise traditional outputs and undervalue software; policy reform is needed to fully recognise open science contributions in researcher assessments and funding decisions.

5. Sustainable infrastructures

  • Recommendation: Develop and maintain sustainable infrastructures that support the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of publicly funded research data and other research-relevant digital objects.
  • Software-specific actions:
    • Support open-license, publicly funded data and software repositories
    • Invest in infrastructure and skilled human resources to maintain repositories and prevent duplication.
    • Avoid vendor lock-in through mandates for open-source software and interoperability.
  • Challenges: changing storage formats, software dependencies, and unstable platforms that threaten long-term usability.

6. Human capital

  • Recommendation: Support the development of the human capital —through training, new professional roles (e.g., research software engineers), and integrating Open Science principles into academic curricula—to fully realise the benefits of open access to publicly funded research data and other research-relevant digital objects from public funding.
  • Software-Specific actions:
    • Develop attractive career paths for research software engineers (RSEs).
    • Integrate Open Science principles into academic curricula.
    • Ensure inclusivity and diversity in data and software management and training in digital skills for research.
    • Recognise and reward software development skills as high value added to publicly funded research and innovation.
  • Challenges:
    • Lack of recognition, low salaries, unclear advancement paths.
    • Fragmented institutional strategies and underinvestment in skills development.

Attract Scientists and Software Engineers Across Disciplines (Article VIII.3.)

See: How to implement Attracting Scientists and Software Engineers Across Disciplines

Article VIII.3 emphasises the need to attract and retain data scientists and research software engineers by creating stable, well-compensated, and rewarding career paths within publicly funded research. This includes enabling cross-disciplinary and cross-sector mobility, recognising data and software expertise as critical to research, and fostering inclusive, collaborative work environments. Key barriers include uncompetitive salaries, limited career progression, and a lack of institutional recognition, all of which demand cultural and structural changes to support long-term retention.

7. International cooperation for access to research data

  • Recommendation: Collaborate internationally to enable cross-border access to publicly funded research data and digital objects, fostering idea exchange, advancing science, and addressing global societal challenges.
  • Challenges: Implementing international collaboration is hindered by fragmented legal and ethical systems, differing national priorities, limited coordination among global initiatives, capacity disparities, and the complex management of sensitive data, all of which require unified oversight, sustained investment, and shared standards to overcome.

Case studies that include consideration of research software

Pillar: Data governance for trust

Pillar: Technical standards and practices

Pillar: Responsibility, ownership, and stewardship

Pillar: Incentives and rewards

Pillar: Sustainable infrastructures

Pillar: Human capital

Pillar: International co-operation for access to research data