www.software.ac.uk Software Sustainability: Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Issues, Challenges and Initiatives Neil Chue Hong, N.ChueHong@software.ac.uk EPCC Seminar, Edinburgh, 29th July 2015 (@npch) Supported by Project funding from Software Sustainability Institute Where indicated slides licensed under The Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk A national facility for cultivating better, more sustainable, research software to enable worldclass research • Software reaches boundaries in its development cycle that prevent improvement, growth and adoption • Providing the expertise and services needed to negotiate to the next stage • Developing the policy and tools to support the community developing and using research software Supported by EPSRC Grant EP/H043160/1, and EPSRC/ESRC/BBSRC grant EP/N006410/1 Software Sustainability Institute Software Training Helping the community to develop software that meets the needs of reliable, reproducible, and reusable research Delivering essential software skills to researchers via CDTs, institutions & doctoral schools Outreach Collecting evidence on the community’s software use & sharing with stakeholders Policy Exploiting our platform to enable engagement, delivery & uptake Bringing together the right people to understand and address topical issues Community Software Training Advice Courses 35+ UK SWC workshops 1000+ learners Consultancy 50+ projects 130+ evaluations 4 surgeries Outreach Guides 80+ guides 50,000 readers Website & blog Research 740 researchers 50,000 grants analysed 150+ contributed articles 20,000 unique visitors per month 3,000 Twitter followers Campaigns Workshops Fellowship 61 domain ambassadors 300+ RSEs engaged 2100 signatures 13 issues highlighted Policy 20+ workshops organised Community Software isn’t special, it’s mainstream 92% www.software.ac.uk 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. http://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2014-12-04-its-impossible-conduct-research-without-software-say-7-out-10-ukresearchers Software Sustainability Institute And everyone’s a developer www.software.ac.uk 56% 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. http://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2014-12-04-its-impossible-conduct-research-without-software-say-7-out-10-ukresearchers Software Sustainability Institute So what’s the issue? 30% Of UK research investment has been spent on research which relies on software (£840m in 2013/14, rising 3% a year) 71% Of UK researchers have had no formal software development training 77% Of PIs had not included costs for software development in bids (20% deliberately) 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 Software Sustainability Institute covering 2010-2014. Analysis of 10,005 job adverts posted to jobs.ac.uk in 1H2014. … and then there are gender related issues www.software.ac.uk Software Credit www.software.ac.uk • How do you get credit for producing software? Roles e.g. Project Credit http://credit.casrai.org/ Mechanisms • Software papers e.g. JORS, SoftwareX • Software citation e.g. Software Citation Working Group https://www.force11.org/group/software-citation-working-group Tools • Researcher Identifiers e.g. ORCID http://orcid.org/ • Alt-Metrics e.g. ImpactStory http://impactstory.org/ Workshop at Natural History Museum • http://www.software.ac.uk/software-credit • 19th October Software Sustainability Institute Campaigning for careers www.software.ac.uk Software Sustainability Institute software.ac.uk/policy Careers outside academic sector Career Paths in UK Non-university Research (industry, government etc.) PhD students www.software.ac.uk UK STEM graduate career paths Early Career Permanent Professor Research Research Staff Software Sustainability Institute Source: The Scientific Century, Royal Society, 2010 (revised to reflect first stage clarification from “What Do PhD’s Do?” study) Research Software Engineer www.software.ac.uk Join the RSE community at http://www.rse.ac.uk/ Network for RSE group leaders being formed Software Sustainability Institute Teach basic lab skills for scientific computing so that researchers can do more in less time and with less pain. admin@software-carpentry.org Teach basic concepts, skills and tools for working more effectively with data. Workshops are designed for people with little to no prior computational experience. admin@datacarpentry.org Open source learning, that can be tailored to disciplines. “Train the trainers”: building a capable base of instructors. Pyramid of skills Multiple disciplines bioinformatics ecology genomics sociology digital humanities neuroscience geosciences …. SKILLS Full computational lab skillset Good knowledge of programming (R, Python or other), structured data, metadata, proficiency in building workflows and automating tasks Different levels of career PhD students postdoctoral researchers research assistants researchers in industry Some knowledge of scripting, using workflow tools, command line …. Data + spreadsheets + some statistics and…? Slide courtesy of Aleksandra Pawlik, Data Carpentry Creating Policy www.software.ac.uk • Research Software Engineers Initial concept at Collaborations Workshop 2012 EPSRC piloting Fellowships in 2015 • Software Management Plans Discussed in 2011 Piloted on EPSRC and ESRC calls in 2013-2015 Software accreditation work starting soon • Software Licensing Piloting with Wellcome Trust, through workshops • Women in Software Blog series and supporting work of other groups • What should be next? Software Sustainability Institute Find out more about the SSI www.software.ac.uk • Community Engagement (Lead: Shoaib Sufi) Fellowship Programme Events and Workshops • Consultancy (Lead: Steve Crouch) Open Call for Projects / Collaborations Software Evaluation • Policy and Publicity (Lead: Simon Hettrick) Case Studies / Policy Campaigns Software and Research Blog • Training (Lead: Aleksandra Pawlik) Software Carpentry (300+ students/year) Guides and Top Tips • Journal of Open Research Software (Editor: Neil Chue Hong) • Collaboration between universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford and Southampton Supported by EPSRC Grant EP/H043160/1, and EPSRC/ESRC/BBSRC grant EP/N006410/1 Software Sustainability Institute