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I would like to distribute some of the materials related to my paper (such as source code) available online. I have the option of uploading them to my personal website or to a server in my institution, (or any better ways you suggest?)

I am concerned that if I upload it on the institution personal space, after graduating I won't have access to the server anymore or my page might be closed. and I don't want to disappoint my readers by providing a link which may expire in a few years.

Personal website seems a good option so I fully have control over the materials.

I would like to know if there is any better option or online services recognized especially for hosting academic materials (here my code) which I can link them in my paper?

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    By "codes" do you mean "source code"?
    – Dave Clarke
    Jul 1, 2013 at 5:31
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    A lot of academics have personal websites that are provided by their institution where they place extra materials alongside their publication listings. Or alternatively they provide it on an external service such as github or figshare.
    – Stephen Tierney
    Jul 1, 2013 at 8:23
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    @SuperUser I think a combination of both is more professional. Use a website on your institutions server to inherit some of the reputation (for example people trust .edu domains) and trust. Provide links on this website to github or another online source control system as this better handles code than just providing a static zip file. But it sounds like you will leave your institution soon so the best solution is to use a personal website in combination with external services.
    – Stephen Tierney
    Jul 1, 2013 at 11:13
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    Which field are you in? For example in neuroinformatics there are public repositories (icnf or carmen) and researchers are advised to share their models/code in such databases. I can imagine that in other fields there might be similar initiatives.
    – Rabbit
    Jul 1, 2013 at 13:20
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    Similar answer can be found here. The answer was for dissertation but I think this situation is similar. I am not familiar with Github but it looks like others recommend it.
    – Theresa Liao
    Jul 2, 2013 at 18:14

4 Answers 4

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Try something like github which will provide not only a public place for storing your code, but also will give you version control.

Other similar sites exist such as GoogleDocs, FlipDrive, DropBox, ...

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  • Thanks for the helpful answer, Would it look more professional to use my personal page, or use github ?
    – SuperUser
    Jul 1, 2013 at 10:09
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    If your personal webpage is professional looking then that should be no problem. The advantage of github is that people can follow your developments and even contribute to them.
    – Dave Clarke
    Jul 1, 2013 at 10:53
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    For source code definetly go with github or a similar service
    – Ajasja
    Jul 1, 2013 at 10:58
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    You can also use "GitHub Pages" to combine the features of GitHub with something that looks a bit more professional (to non-programmers).
    – Thomas
    Jul 1, 2013 at 19:07
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I would suggest that if you are able to keep them up-to-date, a personal website containing a guide/summary of your works with GitHub (or similar) repositories to host code.

The benefit of this is that it allows you the best of both worlds. I would suggest that your personal site would be the "professional" portal to your academic papers etc, with blurbs / 'about me' etc while the source code and documentation being managed on GitHub (or similar).

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I would also recommend a combination, with e.g. the personal page pointing to other resources where source code, slides, presentations, pdfs are stored. Beside github (or other options where you can have both private and public repositories) I would also recommend figshare, where you can upload many forms of research output (data files, figures, manuscripts, source code etc). Each item will also get a doi, which makes them easy to cite.

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For hosting - anything which looks decent and has no adverts will be fine. For me there is little difference if it is hosted on institute's server or not (I know many serious academic sites with personal domains, or on some page farms). But there is a big difference if:

  • it is clean and complete (good interface, you can easily reach to publications, affiliation, e-mail etc),
  • it is up-to-date,
  • it stays there (and don't end as a deadlink in a few years; if you move make it explicit; I hate guessing "which e-mail for which page seems to be the current one").

Beware that even if you host your server, it may became dead (as some setting change, or you forget to pay for the domain).

For code use things which are suitable for code storage, reuse and discovery. GitHub and similar ones (e.g. BitBucket) are the best places.

Also, for hosting you can use gh-pages (free, stable and relatively easy to use... when you already can use git). Then for example you can have your page in Jekyll (an example, and on using LaTeX there).

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