Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Software
Information and Scientific Publications doi:
10.6084/m9.figshare.678226 Beyond EMI: A Roadmap to Open
Collaboration 9 April 2013, EGI Community Forum, Manchester Neil
Chue Hong (@npch) ORCID: 0000-0002-8876-7606
[email protected] Unless otherwise indicated slides
licensed under
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Software
is no longer easy to define, let alone sustain
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Novel
reuse of public sector data http://www.mysociety.org What do we
sustain: - Map? - Software that creates map? - Software that uses
map?
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk What do we
choose to identify: - Workflow? - Software that runs workflow? -
Software referenced by workflow? - Software dependencies? Whats the
minimum citable part? Boundary
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Algorithm
Function Program Library / Suite / Package Granularity
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Versioning
Personal v1 Personal v1 Personal v2 Personal v2 Personal v3
Personal v3 Personal v2a Personal v2a Public v1 Public v1 Personal
v3a Personal v3a Personal v2a Personal v2a Public v2 Public v2
Public v3 Public v3 Why do we version? - To indicate a change - To
allow sharing - To confer special status
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Authorship
Authorship Which authors have had what impact on each version of
the software? Which authors have had what impact on each version of
the software? Who had the largest contribution to the scientific
results in a paper? Who had the largest contribution to the
scientific results in a paper?http://beyond-impact.org/?p=175
OGSA-DAI projects statistics from Ohloh
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk 5 Stars of
Research Software Community There is a community infrastructure
Open Software has permissive license Defined Accurate metadata for
the software Extensible Usable, modifiable for my purpose Runnable
I can access and run software C O DE R c.f. 5 Stars of Linked Data
(Berners-Lee) 5 Stars of Online Journals (Shotton) Golden Star
Originally by Ssolbergj CC-BY
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Publishing
metadata about software makes it easier to reuse and maintain
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk
Discoverable Software To grow a community around software, first it
must be discoverable For users, wanting to find a solution For
developers, wanting to reuse or extend For funders, wanting to
promote or feature For sustainability Provide useful information
Make it easier to attract and add contributors Enable dormant
projects to re-activate?
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Software
Hub Prototyping What information is useful? Do both provider and
user benefit? What can be imported from other sites? What metadata
must be collected to produce this information? Is it possible or
easy to collect? How do people search for software?
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Types of
Metadata Name Provenance and Ownership Functionality and
Constraints Content and Composition Environment and Dependencies
Location See also: Significant Properties of Software (Matthews et
al) Software Ontology (Malone et al)
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Collecting
Software Metadata Can we make the software metadata collection
process work? What are the benefits to provider and user?
Distinction between Project information and Product Information
Difference between information that enables discovery and choice,
and the metadata that allows this information to be displayed E.g.
vitality of project different for developer vs user
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Levels of
Showcasing Level 1: internal Has had support from Jisc Has produced
a software output Metadata is incomplete Level 2: awaiting approval
enough metadata to publish it externally perhaps not all quality
criteria met Level 3: published meets quality criteria enough
information to allow comparison Level 4: featured seen as
particularly useful, exciting, best of breed etc. associated
screencasts, tutorials to show off Offer incentives to move up the
levels
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Journal of
Open Research Software http://openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk Ten tips
for citing scientific software 1.Describe any software that played
a critical part in your research, so that a peer can understand,
repeat, validate and reuse your research. 2.There are many options
for describing the software you have used: footnotes,
acknowledgements, methods sections, and appendices. 3.Be aware that
a license may place you under an obligation to attribute the use of
software in your publication. 4.Cite papers that describe software
as a complement to, not a replacement for, citing the software
itself. 5.In the first draft of a paper, always put software
citations in references or bibliographies. 6.Be prepared to debate
with reviewers why you have cited the software: you want to
acknowledge the contribution of the software's authors and the
value of software as a legitimate research output. 7.Inform
reviewers if you are legally obliged to cite the software because
of a clause in the software's license. 8.If a reviewer disagrees
with a formal software citation, you can still make a general
reference to the software in the paper. 9.Recommended citations may
not have enough information to accurately describe the software
that was used - you may need to add more detail yourself. 10.If the
software has a DOI (digital object identifier) use it to cite the
software. If the software has its own website, use the website's
URL for the citation.
http://www.software.ac.uk/how-cite-and-describe-software
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk
SoftwareCite Does the DataCite approach work with software? What is
the cost of minting a DOI? What level do you mint DOIs for
software? What is the cost of storing the metadata associated with
a software asset? What is the cost of a software asset associated
with a DOI disappearing?
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk
Alternative Impact Stories GitHub Repository Starring as a means of
recommendation Forking analogous to citing Direct measure of
software citation? Requires user IDs, repository IDs, APIs
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk We must
describe and cite software otherwise we cannot benefit from and
reward reuse and refinement
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk The
Software Sustainability Institute A national facility for
cultivating world- class research through software Better software
enables better 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
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk The
Foundations of Digital Research Re- search Careers Recognition /
Reward Skills and Capability Software Re-usable Re-producible
www.software.ac.uk/ software-evaluation-guide resources/guides
software-carpentry training www.software.ac.uk/blog/
2012-11-09-craftsperson-and-scholar
software.ac.uk/blog/2012-08-16-what-research-
software-community-and-why-should-you-care
www.software.ac.uk/blog/2011-05-02-
publish-or-be-damned-alternative-
impact-manifesto-research-software Prli A, Procter JB (2012) Ten
Simple Rules for the Open Development of Scientific Software PLoS
Comput Biol 8(12): e1002802. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002802
Wilson G, et al. (2013) Best Practices for Scientific Computing
Submitted to PNAS. http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.0530
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk SSI
Organisation Community Engagement (Shoaib Sufi) Fellowship
Programme Fellowship Programme Events and Roadshows Consultancy
(Steve Crouch) Open Call for Projects Open Call for Projects
Software Evaluation Software Evaluation Policy and Publicity (Simon
Hettrick) Guides and Case Studies Guides and Case Studies Best
Practice and Policy Training (Mike Jackson) Software Carpentry
Software Carpentry Software Surgeries Collaboration between
universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford and Southampton. 9.5
FTEs for 5 yrs supplemented by additional project funding.
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Software Sustainability Institute www.software.ac.uk SSI at EGI
CF13 Community Engagement (Lead: Shoaib Sufi) Wed 10 th,
16:00Engaging the software in research community Thu 11 th, 14:00
Champions workshop: SSI Fellows Consultancy (Lead: Steve Crouch)
All WeekAsk Steve / Mike at the SSI booth Policy and Publicity
(Lead: Simon Hettrick) Wed 10 th, 16:20Building sustainable
software for science: why good code is only the beginning Training
(Lead: Mike Jackson) Thu 11 th, all-daySoftware Carpentry Taster
Sessions doi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.678226 Collaboration between
universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford and Southampton.
Supported by EPSRC Grant EP/H043160/1.
