Background

In the past few decades, computer software has become essential in virtually every type of scientific research. However, research software itself is rarely considered as a research output. It is often developed as a one-off task to solve a specific problem, without any consideration for its usability beyond a particular research project. This leads to a software that is hard to find, hard to understand and hard to reuse.

Establishing and promoting best practices in research software development can improve it’s quality and sustainability, and will lead to improved reproducibility and reusability of research results.

We propose four simple recommendations aiming to raise the awareness of best practices and encouraging their adoption. These recommendations are designed around Open Source values, and provide practical suggestions that contribute to making research software and its source code more discoverable, reusable and transparent.

How to contribute and get in touch

To endorse the Recommendations go to the Endorse section and fill in a short online from. The Supporters section list individual researchers and organisations who have already endorsed the Recommendations.

If you would like to be part of this group to develop further software best practices and recommendations, add your contact information to this spreadsheet to subscribe you to our mailing list and github repository.

Who we are

The Recommendations have been developed by the Open Source Software Working group, supported by ELIXIR, SSI and the Netherlands eScience Center.

The group includes a wide range of stakeholders including developers, managers, researchers, funders, project coordinators and, in general, people who are concerned with the production of quality software for research in different scientific disciplines.

More information about this Working Group and their outcomes can be found in the SoftDev4Research GitHub site.

Next steps

  • Work towards adoption (endorsement, promotion and compliance)
  • Establish a collaboration between ELIXIR and Software Carpentry Foundation to create a set of training materials to help researchers and developers to comply with the 4OSS recommendations.

Future meetings:

Past meetings: