The SoftWipe tool and benchmark for assessing coding standards adherence of scientific software

Abstract

Scientific software from all areas of scientific research is pivotal to obtaining novel insights. Yet the coding standards adherence of scientific software is rarely assessed, even though it might lead to incorrect scientific results in the worst case. Therefore, we have developed an open source tool and benchmark called SoftWipe, that provides a relative software coding standards adherence ranking of 48 computational tools from diverse research areas. SoftWipe can be used in the review process of software papers and to inform the scientific software selection process.