We would see improvements in the long-term accuracy and reliability of academic open-source software if journals required submitted software to be accredited, and if funders were to establish a mechanism for accrediting it (see Nature 571, 133–134; 2019).

Funding bodies could improve the quality and reproducibility of scientific software by creating a software-engineering task force that would cover code reviews, training workshops and standards development, for example.

A software-standards accreditation scheme from large funding organizations would carry considerable clout and help to usher in cultural change. The scheme would ensure minimum standards in reproducibility, documentation and security. Different aspects such as code coverage (the proportion of code that is automatically tested) could be evaluated using automated metrics and tests.

Public parts of code would be subject to automated vulnerability testing for common security issues. They would also need to have basic application-programming-interface documentation, which describes how programmers can use each software function and how other code can interface with it.