New website measures the impact factor of computer code
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.029478
Nature : Unlike research papers, whose impact can be determined by the journals in which they are published and the number of citations, contributions to computer code have largely gone unnoticed. To measure the value of software, a free website has been launched. Depsy , whose name originates from “dependency network,” tracks the impact of software in three ways: the number of mentions in research papers, the number of times the code is reused by others, and its download statistics. Although Depsy can’t yet distinguish between important and trivial contributions and can only track code that is publicly available, its creators hope to continue to expand its capabilities.
