Open Source Research Software

Abstract

ware is a central asset for development activities. For good scientific practice, the resulting research software should be open source. Established open source software licenses provide sufficient options for granting permissions such that it should be the rare exception to keep research software closed. Proper engineering is required for obtaining reusable and sustainable research software. This way, software engineering methods may improve research in other disciplines. However, research in software engineering and computer science itself will also benefit when programs are reused. To study the state of the art in this field, we analyzed research software publishing practices in computer and computational science and observed significant differences: computational science emphasizes reproducibility, while computer science emphasizes reuse. SOFTWARE ENGINEERING FOR SUSTAINABLE RESEARCH SOFTWARE Research software is employed during the scientific discovery process, and it can be an object of study itself. Computational science (also known as scientific computing) involves the development of research software for model simulations and data analytics that facilitate the understanding of natural systems, answering questions that neither theory nor experiment alone is equipped to answer. Computational science is the application of computer science and software engineering principles to solving technical problems, whereas computer science is the study of computer hardware and software design. Despite the increasing importance of research software to the scientific discovery process, well-established software engineering practices are rarely adopted in

Computational Science: A Field of Inquiry for Design Science Research

“…Yet, this software is critical for correctly carrying out research that involves modeling biological structures, or simulating data on evolution, and so forth [4]. These software artifacts are also needed by other researchers who attempt to build upon prior work; hence the need for making software open source [16].…”

An environment for sustainable research software in Germany and beyond: current state, open challenges, and call for action

“… Lack of suitable incentive systems : Contributions to research that are not traditional text-based products (i.e., papers or monographs) are still not sufficiently rewarded, or not rewarded at all, due to the missing implementation of mandatory software citation 20 , 24 – 32 , among other reasons. Interestingly, one third of research software repositories have a lifespan (defined as the time from the first time any code was uploaded to the last contribution) of less than one day (median: 15 days 11 ), indicating that many codes are only made available publicly for the publication in a journal (as increasingly encouraged or required by journals 33 and associated with higher impact 34 ) but are not maintained thereafter. Lack of awareness : Research software sustainability and its importance is lacking visibility as well as acceptance 35 – 38 , and research software engineering in its implementation as sustainable software development and software maintenance is not sufficiently supported, both in Germany and beyond 9 , 39 , 40 .…”

“…Hasselbring et al . found that the adoption of FAIR principles is different between fields with an emphasis on reuse in computer science as opposed to a reproducibility focus in computational science 11 . Fehr et al .…”

“…As another example, the 2019 “Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice” codex of the DFG now explicitly lists software side-by-side with other research results and data. The FAIR principles for research data 10 provide guidelines for data archiving, but enabling full reproducibility and traceability of research software requires additional steps 11 . In consequence, there are ongoing discussions on whether software should be considered as a specific kind of research data or as a separate entity 12 .…”

Comment on gmd-2021-311

“…For version control, tracking and reproducibility, the results are stored together with the setup files. Based on the results, other research might be launched and findings are published, preferably including the code contribution(Hasselbring et al, 2020).…”