The authors are listed alphabetically by order of last name. This presentation was collaboratively prepared for and given at a meeting with NWO (The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research; the national research council of the Netherlands) on 28 March 2019. Our aim was to highlight the importance of research software in contemporary research and its relationship to research data, open science, and reproducibility in research. Our key messages to NWO: If open science is to lead towards better, more transparent, and reproducible research, then research software, research data and publications need all to be treated on equal footing at the policy level. NWO should make more explicit policies for supporting and evaluating research software. There are some differences when it comes to research software preservation (Software Sustainability) as compared to data preservation, but it shouldn’t be more difficult.