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This month’s news includes:
- This month in research software - community news
- International Funders Workshop: The Future of Research Software
- Database of research software funding opportunities
- Research institution policies to support research software
- Opportunities to get involved with community initiatives
- Community events and resources
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This month in research software - community news
Recognition of research software:
- Ten simple rules for funding scientific open source software by Strasser, et al., provides guidance and considerations for funders and other community members interested in supporting scientific software; addressing specific issues related to software, including contributor community development, governance, sustainability, and diversity and inclusion, based on experiences from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation program officers.
- The New Zealand eScience Initiative (NeSI) are sharing how they enable research communities to truly value the contributions of research software in underpinning contemporary science in Contributing to local & global kōrero around the value, impacts and future of Research Software.
- The activities of the Software College of the French National Committee on Open Science are now available in English. See also their Opportunity Note: Encouraging a wider usage of software derived from research.
- The German Sovereign Tech Fund will fund nine open digital infrastructures to test the model outlined in their 2021 Feasibility Study to Examine a Funding Program for Open Digital Base Technologies as the Foundation for Innovation and Digital Sovereignty.
- The International Conference on Research Infrastructures (ICRI) 2022 saw the release of the Brno Declaration on Fostering a Global Ecosystem of Research Infrastructures, and conference presentations are now available.
- Why don't we share data and code? Perceived barriers and benefits to public archiving practices by Gomes et al. classifies barriers and benefits to sharing data and code found in the research community into three broad categories: knowledge barriers, reuse concerns and career incentives.
Funding opportunities - also see ReSA’s list of Research Software Funding Opportunities (announced more fully below):
[USA] National Science Foundation (NSF): Strengthening the Cyberinfrastructure Professionals Ecosystem (23-521): Aims to democratise access to NSF’s advanced cyberinfrastructure ecosystem; ensure fair and equitable access to resources, services, and expertise; by strengthening how Cyberinfrastructure Professionals function in this ecosystem. Closes 23 Feb. [USA] Department Of Energy Funding to Seed Collaborations for Software Sustainability (DE-FOA-0002844): The Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program seeks to seed collaborations focused on software sustainability. Applications should articulate a long-term vision for sustaining a substantial part of the ecosystem of software for scientific and high-performance computing and should describe how their efforts might be rapidly scaled up in the future. Closes 19 Dec. [Germany] DFG Call for Proposals to Increase the Usability of Existing Research Software: The primary goal of the funding is to increase the usability of existing research software as far as possible. This interdisciplinary call for proposals pursues three sub-goals which together seek to raise the maturity level of research software so that it can also be used by researchers other than those developing it, and to simplify its further development: usability and impact, quality assurance, and further development. Letter of intent closes 10 Jan.
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International Funders Workshop: The Future of Research Software
On 8 and 9 November, the Research Software Alliance (ReSA) and Netherlands eScience Center organised the International Funders Workshop: The Future of Research Software. During this workshop, a number of members from the Research Software Funders Forum came together with other organisations that support research software. Participants explored how to effectively fund new and existing research software. In total, more than 60 representatives from 45 organisations attended the workshop. A summary of the event is available in Global gathering of research software funders sets the agenda for supporting sustainable research software, and you can read a blog about it, and watch recordings of the keynotes.
A major part of the workshop focused on drafting the Amsterdam Declaration on Funding Research Software Sustainability. Research software is defined within the Declaration as source code files, algorithms, scripts, computational workflows and executables that were created during the research process or for a research purpose. Drafting of the Declaration is continuing; if you would like to be kept up to date and potentially be involved in this process then email amsterdamdeclaration@esciencecenter.nl to request to be sent subscription details when available.
ReSA’s November Research Software Community Forum included discussion on the International Funders Workshop: The Future of Research Software (Nov 8-9) by Dr. Carlos Martinez-Ortiz, Community Manager, Natural Sciences & Engineering, for the Netherlands eScience Center. You can watch the recording of the talk by Carlos.
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| Research institution policies to support research software |
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Are you interested in research institution policies that support research software and the people who develop and maintain it? ReSA is looking to convene a task force that could add to our collection of institutional policies and consider how to better share these with interested stakeholders. Some examples of policies that address different areas include:
- Multiple areas:
Research Software Policy (TU Delft, Netherlands) facilitates best-practices on research software management and sharing; emphasises the value of research software as a standalone research output and facilitates proper recognition of the contribution of TU Delft researchers to software, etc.
- Roles and career advancement:
Academic Specialist (University of Melbourne Australia) is one of four academic staff work categorisations, that includes the role of Research Software Engineers (RSEs). Research Application Manager (The Alan Turing Institute, UK) shares measures of success used for this role. Research Software Standards (Monash University Business School, Australia) outlines a process for assessing software in career advancement.
- Licensing:
Open Source Software Policy (University of North Texas, USA) focuses on the use of, contribution to, and creation and release of Open Source Software in order to support open scholarship. Scientific Information policy (Science Mission Directorate, NASA, USA) describes how scientific information (including software) is shared.
If you’d like to join this task force or want more information, then contact info@researchsoft.org. The Academic Data Science Alliance (ADSA) and US-RSE also recently hosted a workshop to create resources to help academic institutions and those who hire and manage data scientists and RSEs to support their careers. Other relevant initiatives include the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (COARA).
The Code Availability group is another ReSA task force, jointly convened with FORCE11, that is working towards greater alignment on policy and other related actions for code availability. Contact code-availability+owner@googlegroups.com to request to join.
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| Opportunities to get involved with community initiatives |
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Take part in this Research Software Funders Forum survey to input on the crafting of a joint multilateral funding initiative on research software. The survey aims to to understand the needs of researchers with regard to funding the development and enhancement of research software, as well the associated ecosystems (e.g., training, education, and policy). Volunteer to review for the Journal of Open Source Software. Open, collaborative reviews are conducted via GitHub issues, and authors often say it's the most constructive review process they've experienced. Fill in Superbloom’s survey to contribute to research on how scientific open source software teams understand, consider, and undertake usability and design initiatives in their projects, funded by the Sloan Foundation. A $15 USD gift card is offered for your time.
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| Community events |
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deRSE23 Conference for RSEs in Germany, 20-21 Feb, Paderborn, Germany Research Data Alliance (RDA) Plenary 20, 21-23 March. Gothenburg, Sweden, and online IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 14-20 May, Melbourne, Australia, and online Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing (PASC), 26-28 June, Davos, Switzerland.
Digital Humanities 2023: “Collaboration as opportunity”, 10-14 July. Graz, Austria 2023 Collegeville Workshop on Scientific Software - Software Design, 24-27 July, Collegeville, USA RSECon23, 4-8 Sept, UK IEEE eScience23, 9-13 Oct, Limassol, Cyprus US-RSE's First Conference, 16-18 Oct, Chicago, USA International Data Week (including RDA Plenary 21), 23-26 Oct, Salzburg, Austria
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To suggest items for inclusion in ReSA News, please contact info@researchsoft.org.
ReSA's vision is that research software and those who develop and maintain it are recognised and valued as fundamental and vital to research worldwide.The ReSA mission is to bring research software communities together to collaborate on the advancement of the research software ecosystem. ReSA is a fiscally sponsored project of Code for Science and Society.
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