Dealing with research software: recommendations for best practices

In this paper we present general recommendations for dealing with research software. We discuss incentives and metrics, software development and documentation, accessibility, publication and transfer strategies, infrastructures, quality assurance, licensing and other legal topics, education and training, as well as policies and guidelines. We consider research software, alongside text and data, as an essential element of open science. We argue that research software should be treated and acknowledged as a discrete product of the research process