We are the 92%Valuing the contribution of research software

Neil Chue Hong, N.ChueHong@software.ac.ukFORCE2015 Research Communications and e-Scholarship13th January 2015, Oxfordhttp://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1287816

www.software.ac.uk

Supported by Project funding from

Software isn’t special, it’s mainstream

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.

69%92%

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

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.

56% 21%

So what’s the issue?

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 Researchcovering 2010-2014. Analysis of job adverts posted to jobs.ac.uk in 1H2014.

71%

4%

Of UK researchers have had no formal software development training

Of jobs advertised in UK universities were software related

77% Of PIs had not included costs for software development in bids

30%Of UK research investment has been spent on research which relies on software

… a

nd t

hen

ther

e ar

e ge

nder

rel

ated

issu

es

Career Paths in UKCareers outside academic sector

Non-universityResearch (industry,government etc.)

ProfessorPermanentResearch Staff

Early CareerResearch

PhD

stud

ents

Source: The Scientific Century, Royal Society, 2010 (revised to reflect first stage clarification from “What Do PhD’s Do?” study)

UK STEM graduate

career paths

How do we cite software?

• 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

Attribution and Authorship• 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

Further reading

• 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-its-imp

ossible-conduct-research-without-software-say-7-out-10-uk-researchers

• Software Attribution: can we improve the reusability and sustainability of research software– http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.942289