By releasing software and code you have created and/or developed in your research you are further contributing to the research landscape and making your approach to research more open, transparent, and reproducible. You can also keep track of versions and track download and citation statistics.
The Australian Government's Management of Data and Information in Research guide supports the Australian Code for Responsible Conduct of Research (the Code). It states that all versions of research software used or developed must be made available upon request. This has implications for researchers on Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants who must comply with the Code.
The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) has more information on open software, how it relates to the broader Australian landscape, and further resources.
Source code management
Source code management (SCM), or version control systems, are tools that not only allow you to manage your research code, but also enable collaboration and code sharing.
In this video, Errol from the Digital Skills Training team explains how using the Git SCM system can benefit your research:
Code repositories and platforms
Using a version control system like Git makes it easier to collaborate and share with other researchers. There are a number of code repositories that are specifically designed for managing, sharing and collaborating on version-controlled software and code.
Most of these platforms allow you to create an account for free, though some of them have restrictions on the number of repositories you can create, size of file you can upload, or number of contributors you can have.
University-managed and supported source code repository
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GitLab is the University-managed code repository platform. It is based on the Git source code management system. No registration is needed, just log in with your University username and password. Repositories can be restricted to collaborators you specify, to anyone within the University, or made open to the public.
Other source code repositories
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GitHub is the most widely used source code repositories. It is a version-controlled platform where you can collaborate with others to share and write code. Repositories on GitHub can be either private or public and they can integrate with digital asset repositories and platforms, making it easy for others to reuse and cite your code.
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Bitbucket offers many of the same features as other code repositories, as well as supporting the Mercurial version control system.
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SourceForge is one of the most long-established code repositories and began offering support for Git relatively recently in its history.
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Launchpad is well-used within the open source community and offers good support for Git.
Sharing code using a digital asset repository or platform
Digital asset repositories are a great way to share and publish version-controlled software and code.
A digital asset repository will allow you to apply an open license to and mint a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for your code and software, ensuring that people not only have access to your output, but a way of citing your work.
Working with digital assets across multiple platforms can be complex. While a source code management (SCM) or version control system is ideal for tracking and managing changes to your code, a digital asset management platform can effectively monitor reuse metrics, enable more accurate attribution of output to the creator, and support the preservation of research outputs.
To simplify the process of managing source code available across more than one platform, you can intergrade your GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket code repositories with Melbourne Figshare, the University of Melbourne's institutional digital asset repository. The benefits of this are:
- The integration enables an auto synchronisation of records between the SCM platform and the University repository.
- It creates more efficiency by removing the need for you to manually transfer information from one platform to another. For every new version of the code released in the SCM platform the University's repository will update and automatically display the latest version of your code.
- You can continue to work within the SCM platform, working with the advantages of version control, receiving feedback and collaborating with peer communities.
- With the knowledge that your source code has been ingested as a research output into the University's digital asset management repository, making it ready for use in research workflows such as publications, theses, and for display on University Researcher profiles such as Find an Expert and the Researcher dashboard.
The integration is slightly different for each code repository. To find out more, visit the Figshare help guides.
Further support
The Digital Stewardship (Research) team provides advice, support, consultations and training in research data stewardship and management, open research and data publication, and the long-term preservation of digital materials.
Page last updated 4 March 2025.
Unless otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.