Anoop C Patil, Maciej Trusiak, Fei Xia, Liangcai Cao, Carlo Manzo and Giovanni Volpe
Journal of Physics: Photonics 8, 020201 (2026)
doi: 10.1088/2515-7647/ae68cd
This editorial draws attention to a major issue in photonics: important research software is often hidden, undocumented, and lost over time, making results hard to reproduce. The rise of AI-generated code increases this problem by adding more ‘black box’ systems. To address this, J. Phys. Photonics is introducing Software Articles, a new article type allowing researchers to publish, validate, and share their code as formal scientific outputs. This initiative aims to promote transparency, reproducibility, and proper credit for developers. Open and peer-reviewed software helps the community verify results, reduce duplication of effort, and build lasting tools, ensuring that computational methods become reliable, accessible, and integral to scientific progress.