Valuing the contribution of research software
Neil Chue Hong, N.ChueHong@software.ac.uk
FORCE2015 Research Communications and e-Scholarship
13 th January 2015, Oxford http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1287816
Supported by www.software.ac.uk
Project funding from
Software
Sustainability
Institute

Software isn’t special, it’s mainstream
92% 69%
Survey of researchers from 15 Russell Group unis conducted by SSI between Aug- Oct 2014.
406 respondents covering representative range of funders, discipline and seniority.

This isn’t just about the “traditional” computational sciences
Survey of researchers from 15 Russell Group unis conducted by SSI between Aug- Oct 2014.
406 respondents covering representative range of funders, discipline and seniority.

And it isn’t just using software, it’s researchers developing software too
56% 21%
Survey of researchers from 15 Russell Group unis conducted by SSI between Aug- Oct 2014.
406 respondents covering representative range of funders, discipline and seniority.

30%
71%
Of UK research investment has been spent on research which relies on software
Of UK researchers have had no formal software development training
77% Of PIs had not included costs for software development in bids
4% Of jobs advertised in UK universities were software related
Survey of researchers from 15 Russell Group unis conducted by SSI between Aug - Oct 2014.
406 respondents covering representative range of funders, discipline and seniority.
Analysis of data from 49,650 grant titles and abstracts published on Gateway to Research covering 2010-2014. Analysis of job adverts posted to jobs.ac.uk in 1H2014.

Careers outside academic sector
Non-university
Research (industry, government etc.)
Early Career
Research
Permanent
Research Staff
Professor
Source: The Scientific Century, Royal Society, 2010 (revised to reflect first stage clarification from “What Do PhD’s Do?” study)

• Citing a paper
– Via an associated paper
– Via a software paper
• Citing software directly
– Using a name
– Using a URL
– Using a persistent identifier
• But citation isn’t the problem, contribution is

• Which authors have had what impact on each version of the software? Should contribution be collective?
• Who had the largest contribution to the scientific results?
OGSA-DAI projects statistics from Ohloh

Researchers still have universal needs
• We know we must describe and cite software otherwise we cannot benefit from reuse and refinement
• But we still need to fix the reward mechanism for non-traditional research outputs
– Because otherwise what is my incentive to do this?
• These slides: http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1287816

• We are the 92%
– http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1243288
• It’s impossible to conduct research without software
– http://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2014-12-04-itsimpossible-conduct-research-without-software-say-7out-10-uk-researchers
• Software Attribution: can we improve the reusability and sustainability of research software
– http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.942289