Software citation, reuse and metadata considerations: An exploratory study examining LAMMPS

ABSTRACT Scientific software is as important to scientific studies as raw data. Yet, attention to this genre of research data is limited in studies on data reuse, citation, and metadata standards. This paper presents results from an exploratory study that examined how scientific software's reuse information is presented in the current citation practice and natural language descriptions in research papers. We selected LAMMPS, popular simulation software used in material science, for this study. Both descriptive metadata elements and the types of reuse are examined from a sample of 400 research papers. The results indicate that both descriptive metadata elements and reuse types about LAMMPS are presented in incomplete and inconsistent ways, and this interferes with the values of scientific software, as a type of research data. Our findings necessitate future studies on the metadata standards to facilitate the identification of information related with scientific software reuse.