LAUSR

Science, and especially biology, is increasingly relying on software tools to enable research. However, if you are a biologist, you likely received no training in software development best practices. Because of this lack of training, scientific software often has minimal or even nonexistent documentation, making the lives of researchers significantly harder than they need to be, with precious research time being spent figuring out how to use poorly documented software rather than performing the actual science. As the field matures, software documentation will become even more important as software stops being maintained and original authors are unable to be reached for support. Prior work has focused on various aspects of open software development [1–7], but documenting software has been underemphasized. I present these 10 simple rules in the hope that, by applying software engineering best practices to research tool documentation, you can create software that is maximally usable and impactful.