Research Software

A growing part of research bases on software, for the generation, the processing, the analysis or the visualization of research data. Some research software is developed locally for a single research project, other software is used, developed and maintained by a large community.

Different initiatives (RDA Group FAIR4RS, RSE-DE, Dagstuhl Manifesto, The Research Software Impact Manifesto) from different disciplines try to enhance the development, the publication and the appreciation of research software.

To answer questions about the usage of research software, Using Research Software describes the correct citation of software and assists with the documentation of the usage of software.

In most cases, research software is developed by researchers who are not formally trained in software development. Developing Research Software shows ways to enhance the quality and the management of produced code.

Research software is often not only useful for the user group and application for which it was developed. It can offer a potential for reuse in other user or application scenarios. Publishing Research Software handles the publication and licensing of software and discusses possibilities to lower the barriers for reuse of research software.

Usually, research software is highly dependent of the environment (hardware, operating system, compiler) it was developed. Hence, with the technical development advancing in a high speed, it is a big challenge to provide software over longer time periods. Archiving Research Software discusses requirements and solutions for long term archiving of software.

Goble, C., Howison, J., Kirchner, C., Nierstrasz, O. & Vinju, J. J. (2016). Engineering Academic Software (Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 16252).. Dagstuhl Reports, 6, 62--87. doi: 10.4230/DagRep.6.6.62

Allen, A., Berriman, G. B., DuPrie, K., Mink, J., Nemiroff, R., Robitaille, T., Shamir, L., Shortridge, K., Taylor, M., Teuben, P. & Wallin, J. (2015). Improving Software Citation and Credit. arxiv:1512.07919

Katz, D. S., Niemeyer, K. E., Smith, A. M., Anderson, W. L., Boettiger, C., Hinsen, K., Hooft, R., Hucka, M., Lee, A., Löffler, F., Pollard, T. & Rios, F. (2016). Software vs. data in the context of citation.. PeerJ PrePrints, 4, e2630.