  Research software is increasingly recognized as a vital component of the
scholarly record. Journals offer authors the opportunity to publish research
software papers, but often have different requirements for how these
publications should be structured and how code should be verified. In this
short case study we gather data from 20 Physical Science journals to trace the
frequency, quality control, and publishing criteria for software papers. Our
goal with the case study is to provide a proof-of-concept for doing descriptive
empirical work with software publication policies across numerous domains of
science and engineering. In the narrative we therefore provide descriptive
statistics showing how these journals differ in criteria required for
archiving, linking, verifying, and documenting software as part of a formal
publication. The contribution of this preliminary work is twofold: 1. We
provide case study of Physical Science research software publications over
time; 2. We demonstrate the use of a new survey method for analyzing research
software publication policies. In our conclusion, we describe how comparative
research into software publication policies can provide better criteria and
requirements for an emerging software publication landscape.
