High-impact Scientific Software in Astronomy and its creators
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866909956940234752 |
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| author | Buchner, Johannes |
| author_facet | Buchner, Johannes |
| contents | In the last decades, scientific software has graduated from a hidden side-product to a first-class member of the astrophysics literature. We aim to quantify the activity and impact of software development for astronomy, using a systematic survey. Starting from the Astrophysics Source Code Library and the Journal of Open Source Software, we analyse 3432 public git-based scientific software packages. Paper abstract text analysis suggests seven dominant themes: cosmology, data reduction pipelines, exoplanets, hydrodynamic simulations, radiative transfer spectra simulation, statistical inference and galaxies. We present key individual software contributors, their affiliated institutes and countries of high-impact software in astronomy & astrophysics. We consider the number of citations to papers using the software and the number of person-days from their git repositories, as proxies for impact and complexity, respectively. We find that half of the mapped development is through US-affiliated institutes, and a large number of high-impact projects are led by a single person. Our results indicate that there are currently over 200 people active on any given day to improve software in astronomy. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_12195 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | High-impact Scientific Software in Astronomy and its creators Buchner, Johannes Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Physics and Society In the last decades, scientific software has graduated from a hidden side-product to a first-class member of the astrophysics literature. We aim to quantify the activity and impact of software development for astronomy, using a systematic survey. Starting from the Astrophysics Source Code Library and the Journal of Open Source Software, we analyse 3432 public git-based scientific software packages. Paper abstract text analysis suggests seven dominant themes: cosmology, data reduction pipelines, exoplanets, hydrodynamic simulations, radiative transfer spectra simulation, statistical inference and galaxies. We present key individual software contributors, their affiliated institutes and countries of high-impact software in astronomy & astrophysics. We consider the number of citations to papers using the software and the number of person-days from their git repositories, as proxies for impact and complexity, respectively. We find that half of the mapped development is through US-affiliated institutes, and a large number of high-impact projects are led by a single person. Our results indicate that there are currently over 200 people active on any given day to improve software in astronomy. |
| title | High-impact Scientific Software in Astronomy and its creators |
| topic | Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics Physics and Society |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.12195 |