Software Sustainability Institute Software Information and Scientific Publications doi: /m9.figshare Beyond EMI: A Roadmap to Open Collaboration 9 April 2013, EGI Community Forum, Manchester Neil Chue Hong ORCID: Unless otherwise indicated slides licensed under

Software Sustainability Institute Software is no longer easy to define, let alone sustain

Software Sustainability Institute Novel reuse of public sector data What do we sustain: - Map? - Software that creates map? - Software that uses map?

Software Sustainability Institute What do we choose to identify: - Workflow? - Software that runs workflow? - Software referenced by workflow? - Software dependencies? What’s the minimum citable part? Boundary

Software Sustainability Institute Algorithm Function Program Library / Suite / Package … Granularity

Software Sustainability Institute 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

Software Sustainability Institute 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? OGSA-DAI projects statistics from Ohloh

Software Sustainability Institute 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

Software Sustainability Institute Publishing metadata about software makes it easier to reuse and maintain

Software Sustainability Institute 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?

Software Sustainability Institute 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?

Software Sustainability Institute 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)

Software Sustainability Institute 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

Software Sustainability Institute 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

Software Sustainability Institute Journal of Open Research Software

Software Sustainability Institute 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.

Software Sustainability Institute 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?

Software Sustainability Institute 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

Software Sustainability Institute We must describe and cite software otherwise we cannot benefit from and reward reuse and refinement

Software Sustainability Institute 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

Software Sustainability Institute The Foundations of Digital Research Re- search Careers Recognition / Reward Skills and Capability Software Re-usable Re-producible software-evaluation-guide resources/guides software-carpentry training craftsperson-and-scholar software.ac.uk/blog/ what-research- software-community-and-why-should-you-care publish-or-be-damned-alternative- impact-manifesto-research-software Prlić A, Procter JB (2012) Ten Simple Rules for the Open Development of Scientific Software PLoS Comput Biol 8(12): e doi: /journal.pcbi Wilson G, et al. (2013) Best Practices for Scientific Computing Submitted to PNAS.

Software Sustainability Institute 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.

Software Sustainability Institute 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: /m9.figshare Collaboration between universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford and Southampton. Supported by EPSRC Grant EP/H043160/1.