Software Curation in Research Libraries: Practice and Promise

Abstract

INTRODUCTION Research software plays an increasingly vital role in the scholarly record. Academic research libraries are in the early stages of exploring strategies for curating and preserving research software, aiming to facilitate support and services for long-term access and use. DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM In 2016, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) began offering postdoctoral fellowships in software curation. Four institutions hosted the initial cohort of software curation fellows. This article describes the work activities and research program of the cohort, highlighting the challenges and benefits of doing this exploratory work in research libraries. NEXT STEPS Academic research libraries are poised to play an important role in research and development around robust services for software curation. The next cohort of CLIR fellows is set to begin in fall 2018 and will likely shape and contribute substantially to an emergent research agenda.

Challenges of measuring software impact through citations: An examination of the lme4 R package

“…Despite the long history of software's involvement in the scientific practice (Wolfram, 1984), it is not until recently did researchers start to perceive software as a first-class research object, one that needs to be "validated, preserved, cited, and credited" (Chassanoff, Borghi, AlNoamany, & Thornton, 2018). As arguably the most important component in the contemporary academic reward system (Garfield & Merton, 1979), being citable is the prerequisite for software to hold this position.…”

Preserving Software: Motivations, Challenges and Approaches

“…What is the focus of your curatorial activities? Candidates include the systematic collection of general-purpose systems, such as older operating systems; software and hardware of historical interest; digital-native artefacts of cultural or social significance (such as timebased media, digital arts, computer games); and source code, especially (but not exclusively) software used in scholarly research (Bearman 1987;Chassanoff et al, 2018).…”

Active Maintenance: A Proposal for the Long-Term Computational Reproducibility of Scientific Results

“…Migration goes further and "includes refreshing the media but also addresses the internal structure of the files so that the information within can be read on subsequent computer platforms, operating systems, and software" (Green, Dionne, and Dennis 1999). Because code is instrumental for computational reproducibility, more archives and repositories are applying these strategies to software (Chassanoff et al 2018).…”