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