Background: Research software is software developed by and/or used by researchers, across a wide variety of domains, to perform their research. Because of the complexity of research software, developers cannot conduct exhaustive testing. As a result, researchers have lower confidence in the correctness of the output of the software. Peer code review, a standard software engineering practice, has helped address this problem in other types of software. Aims: Peer code review is less prevalent in research software than it is in other types of software. In addition, the literature does not contain any studies about the use of peer code review in research software. Therefore, through analyzing developers perceptions, the goal of this work is to understand the current practice of peer code review in the development of research software, identify challenges and barriers associated with peer code review in research software, and present approaches to improve the peer code review in research software. Method: We conducted interviews and a community survey of research software developers to collect information about their current peer code review practices, difficulties they face, and how they address those difficulties. Results: We received 84 unique responses from the interviews and surveys. The results show that while research software teams review a large amount of their code, they lack formal process, proper organization, and adequate people to perform the reviews. Conclusions: Use of peer code review is promising for improving the quality of research software and thereby improving the trustworthiness of the underlying research results. In addition, by using peer code review, research software developers produce more readable and understandable code, which will be easier to maintain.

中文翻译：

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开发人员对研究软件开发中同行代码审查的看法

背景：研究软件是由研究人员开发和/或使用的软件，涉及广泛的领域，以执行他们的研究。由于研究软件的复杂性，开发人员无法进行详尽的测试。因此，研究人员对软件输出的正确性的信心较低。同行代码审查是一种标准的软件工程实践，有助于解决其他类型软件中的这个问题。目标：同行代码审查在研究软件中不如在其他类型的软件中普遍。此外，文献中不包含任何关于在研究软件中使用同行代码审查的研究。因此，通过分析开发人员的看法，这项工作的目标是了解当前在研究软件开发中同行代码审查的实践，确定与研究软件中同行代码审查相关的挑战和障碍，并提出改进研究软件中同行代码审查的方法。方法：我们对研究软件开发人员进行了访谈和社区调查，以收集有关他们当前同行代码审查实践、他们面临的困难以及他们如何解决这些困难的信息。结果：我们从访谈和调查中收到了 84 份独特的回复。结果表明，虽然研究软件团队审查了大量代码，但他们缺乏正式的流程、适当的组织和足够的人员来执行审查。结论：使用同行代码审查有望提高研究软件的质量，从而提高基础研究结果的可信度。此外，通过使用同行代码审查，