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The UK Software Sustainability Institute: Phase 3

Lead Research Organisation: University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre

Abstract

In Phases 1 (Prepare) and 2 (Deploy) we developed an understanding of the state of the nation of research software, its developers/users, its requirements, and how software is changing the way research is conducted. Building on our experience and expert understanding, Phase 3 (Expand) will focus on the creation of sustainable and self-supporting communities of practice to empower cultural change that enables better practice to be widely adopted to: foster a culture of sharing expertise and enabling; integrate project consultancy, training and awareness raising to effect and support change; move from local and individual actions to national and community level effects. Our goal is that the UK research community be enabled to take full advantage of software and, in doing so, to support the conduct of excellent research.


Our objectives are:

A) Widespread adoption of research best practice: agreeing and defining best practice with reference to research software, and enabling its widespread adoption to ensure the reliability and reproducibility of modern research. Enabling development of models and blueprints for initiating, nurturing and maturing communities of practice, enhancing our status in the UK and internationally as the go-to institution for insight into research software matters and catalysing new international collaborations.

B) Cutting-edge policy and guidance: collaborating with stakeholders to create and disseminate evidence-based guidance, infrastructure, policies and tools. This leads to improved reusability of research software and its associated research outputs.

C) A capable research community: based on a sustainable and scalable community-led model that will push the boundaries of knowledge across domains to maintain excellence and drive innovation and career paths, to increase the recognition of research software. Supporting collaboration in the UK research society and helping it become more resilient and sustainable will achieve an increased social and cultural impact.

D) An open evidence bank: identifying and generating datasets, conducting analysis to provide insight and evidence of the importance of software, people and practices. This enables costing of resources required to develop, maintain and preserve research software.


To achieve these goals, we will be:

1) Raising awareness: empower and develop a cohort of ambassadors for good practice through our Fellowship; outreach to stakeholders at all levels on research software issues; to deliver adoption of best practice.

2) Seeding change: build multiple sustainable Communities of Practice (CoP): for research domains, for techniques, for stakeholder groups, for UK institutions; set up expert panels that commission topic-based programmes of workshops, policy studies and outreach; nurture and scale existing CoPs e.g. through RSE exchanges; develop tools and services to support CoPs; to guarantee the widespread adoption of research best practice.

3) Providing expertise: create regional training hubs to continue growth of provision; commission new courses; refocus open call consultancy; conduct feasibility study for an RSE brokerage; to form a capable research community.

4) Influencing policy: publish new guidance and standards; work with international collaborators to put policy into practice; conduct research that improves understanding of research software; to deliver cutting-edge policy and guidance and build an open evidence bank.

Planned Impact

SSI will promote effective use and sustainability of software - Better Software Better Research to ensure that the UK's research and innovation infrastructure can be leveraged by the UK research community, industry and other users to deliver against UKRI's ambitions. By enabling best practice we diminish wasteful reinvention and encourage reuse of software by academia and industry. By developing the computational skills of the research community we will increase the skills base in the economy. Supporting the SSI thus offers an excellent return on investment that contribute directly to UK competitiveness and impacts global economic performance.

In Phase 1 (Prepare) and Phase 2 (Deploy) we established schemes (e.g Fellowship, workshops, consultancy, training, advocacy) to enable knowledge transfer and collaboration between engineers and researchers that achieved value and impact. In Phase 3 (Extend) the work will be scaled through four sets of activities: 1) raising awareness, 2) seeding change, 3) providing expertise and 4) influencing policy. This will empower sustainable change, grow opportunities to learn and access expertise and provide an evidence base for interventions in the 250,000 strong UK research software community.

Academic researchers will gain access to tailored communities of computational practice, training in deeper software skills to face new research challenges, nearby RSE groups to turn to for help, and confidence that work being done to improve practice is backed by rigorous evidence. The maintenance, expansion, exploitation and community development of codes will directly benefit them and others in the UK and the wider international audience.

The commercial and public sector will have access to more robust and high quality software from the research sector, with the potential and incentives for recontribution. We will pursue the commercial exploitation of software with our industrial partners. The commercial sector will benefit from access to people who have gained skills required in industry (through SSI training), improving the ease which researchers and RSEs can transfer to the sector.

UK and international policy makers will see direct benefit from our research into the demographics of the research software community and its economic impact. Our response to inquiries organised by policy stakeholders (e.g. UK government, funding organisations) and internationally (e.g. NSF/DoE, CANARIE, ARDC, OECD) will guide their activities. We will highlight software with capability and potential to define policy in the areas of climate change, mental health, data privacy, social mobility, changing populations, ecosystem services and pollution policy to the appropriate governmental and non-governmental bodies. Publishers and research administrators will be informed by our work on software's place in scholarly communication, software citation and discovery, and software management and assessment.

Public engagement with the research software community will be enabled and enhanced by our open and online channels. Improvements in research enabled by reliable and reproducible software will directly impact our collaborators working in biofuels, fusion energy, health interventions, and drug discovery which are all areas in the public consciousness.

Successful software interventions will be promoted and used as exemplars with our network of international organisations. Our authority in UK, European and international technical and scientific standards bodies, scientific networks and research infrastructures will be used to promote sustainable software practice. Our work will support the UKRI Research and Innovation Infrastructure Roadmap. We will assist key scientific software groups to adopt better development methods, bring together islands of expertise to create critical mass in the community, foster the integration of appropriate software products, and facilitate a fuller dialogue between stakeholders.
 
Description The SSI3 award has resulted in a better understanding of how to support communities of practice that support researchers and research software engineers in establishing and enshrining good software practices.

This has included development of scalable training and guidance, international collaboration to develop better practices around software citation and software preservation, and campaigning for better career paths and recognition of those involved in research software. These have been included in published guidance for software citation, and led to the development of the FAIR for Research Software principles.

Findings have also contributed to international policy, standards and practice through use by the OECD, European Commission, NISO and Research Data Alliance.
Exploitation Route Our materials and data are licensed under a CC-BY license enabling others to reuse them.

As part of the grant, we have established an open evidence bank to support research in this area.
Sectors Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

URL https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8205594
 
Description Contributions have been made to OECD recommendations around digital skills and access to research data. Our findings have been referenced by research software strategies developed by Australia, Germany and the Netherlands. Our work was incorporated into COVID-19 Research Data sharing guidance published by the Research Data Alliance. Our Fellowship programme has supported work which has subsequently had an external impact. This includes work initially funded by this grant by Yo Yehudi (2018 Fellow) and Malvika Sharan (2019 Fellow) to setup the Open Life Science program, which has been awarded over $500,000 in additional funding by Wellcome Trust and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. In conjunction with the UNIVERSE-HPC project, we have produced a podcast series (ByteSized RSE) which takes guidance developed in this grant and makes it available in an easily digested format.
First Year Of Impact 2019
Sector Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)
Impact Types Societal

Economic

Policy & public services

 
Description Carole Goble - NERC Environmental Data Service Strategic Need Advisory Working Group
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Participation in a guidance/advisory committee
 
Description Contribution of Software and Skills section in UKRi report "The UK's research and innovation infrastructure: opportunities to grow our capability"
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Participation in a guidance/advisory committee
URL https://www.ukri.org/files/infrastructure/the-uks-research-and-innovation-infrastructure-opportuniti...
 
Description EOSC FAIR Working Group
Geographic Reach Europe 
Policy Influence Type Membership of a guideline committee
 
Description G7 Open Science Working Group
Geographic Reach Multiple continents/international 
Policy Influence Type Membership of a guideline committee
Impact developing G7 policy on open science
 
Description NISO Taxonomy, Definitions, and Recognition Badging Scheme Working Group
Geographic Reach Multiple continents/international 
Policy Influence Type Influenced training of practitioners or researchers
URL https://www.niso.org/publications/rp-31-2021-badging
 
Description Response to Future of Compute Review
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to a national consultation/review
URL https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/future-of-compute-review
 
Description Submission to the UK Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee's Reproducibility and Research Integrity Inquiry
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Contribution to a national consultation/review
Impact Increased general recognition of the role that software quality has on research reproducibility.
URL https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/39673/html/
 
Description An integrated 'workbench' environment for Quantum Crystallography
Amount £400,525 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/W029588/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 08/2022 
End 08/2025
 
Description Cloud-SPAN: Specialised analyses for environmental 'omics with Cloud-based High Performance Computing
Amount £504,857 (GBP)
Funding ID MR/V038680/1 
Organisation Medical Research Council (MRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2021 
End 03/2023
 
Description Connecting Hub for Advancing the RTP Talent Enabling DRI (CHARTED)
Amount £1,599,998 (GBP)
Organisation United Kingdom Research and Innovation 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2025 
End 03/2029
 
Description DRI-focussed training for research facilitators and teams (DRIFT)
Amount £381,867 (GBP)
Organisation United Kingdom Research and Innovation 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2025 
End 03/2027
 
Description Data driven life science skills development - equipping society for the future
Amount £344,297 (GBP)
Funding ID MR/V039075/1 
Organisation Medical Research Council (MRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 02/2021 
End 02/2023
 
Description ELIXIR-UK: FAIR Data Stewardship training
Amount £687,857 (GBP)
Funding ID MR/V038966/1 
Organisation Medical Research Council (MRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2021 
End 03/2023
 
Description EVERSE: European Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence
Amount £529,031 (GBP)
Funding ID 10104614 
Organisation Innovate UK 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2024 
End 02/2027
 
Description Embedding Trust in Evaluation (E-TIE)
Amount £3,500,000 (GBP)
Organisation United Kingdom Research and Innovation 
Department Research England
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2025 
End 12/2029
 
Description FAIR-Impact: Expanding FAIR Solutions across EOSC
Amount € 8,011,443 (EUR)
Funding ID 101057344 
Organisation European Commission 
Sector Public
Country Belgium
Start 05/2022 
End 05/2025
 
Description Socio-technical resilience in software development (STRIDE)
Amount £998,694 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/T017198/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 02/2020 
End 01/2023
 
Description Software and Skills for Large-Scale Computing: collecting evidence to develop a National Research Software Strategy
Amount £135,772 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/W032155/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 12/2021 
End 03/2022
 
Description The NERC Digital Solutions Hub
Amount £6,999,818 (GBP)
Funding ID NE/W001985/1 
Organisation Natural Environment Research Council 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 06/2021 
End 09/2025
 
Description The Software Sustainability Institute - Phase 4
Amount £8,129,421 (GBP)
Funding ID AH/Z000114/1 
Organisation Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 05/2024 
End 03/2028
 
Description Understanding and Nurturing an Integrated Vision for Education in RSE and HPC (UNIVERSE-HPC)
Amount £506,812 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/W035731/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 03/2022 
End 03/2025
 
Title Dataset - AHRC survey of digital/software requirements survey 2021 
Description This is the data collected from the SSI survey of digital/software requirements run for the AHRC in 2021. Personally Identifiable Information (names, email addresses) have been removed, as have other information to minimise the chance of deductive disclosure (job role, institution). 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/record/7594343
 
Title Dataset - AHRC survey of digital/software requirements survey 2021 
Description This is the data collected from the SSI survey of digital/software requirements run for the AHRC in 2021. Personally Identifiable Information (names, email addresses) have been removed, as have other information to minimise the chance of deductive disclosure (job role, institution). 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/record/7594344
 
Title Dataset - Understanding the software and data used in the social sciences 
Description This is a repository for a UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project to understand the software used to analyse social sciences data. Any software produced has been made available under a BSD 2-Clause license and any data and other non-software derivative is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International License. Note that the software that analysed the survey is provided for illustrative purposes - it will not work on the decoupled anonymised data set. Exceptions to this are: Data from the UKRI ESRC is mostly made available under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Licence. Data from Gateway to Research is made available under an Open Government Licence (Version 3.0). Contents Survey data & analysis: esrc_data-survey-analysis-data.zip Other data: esrc_data-other-data.zip Transcripts: esrc_data-transcripts.zip Data Management Plan: esrc_data-dmp.zip Survey data & analysis The survey ran from 3rd February 2022 to 6th March 2023 during which 168 responses were received. Of these responses, three were removed because they were supplied by people from outside the UK without a clear indication of involvement with the UK or associated infrastructure. A fourth response was removed as both came from the same person which leaves us with 164 responses in the data. The survey responses, Question (Q) Q1-Q16, have been decoupled from the demographic data, Q17-Q23. Questions Q24-Q28 are for follow-up and have been removed from the data. The institutions (Q17) and funding sources (Q18) have been provided in a separate file as this could be used to identify respondents. Q17, Q18 and Q19-Q23 have all been independently shuffled. The data has been made available as Comma Separated Values (CSV) with the question number as the header of each column and the encoded responses in the column below. To see what the question and the responses correspond to you will have to consult the survey-results-key.csv which decodes the question and responses accordingly.  A pdf copy of the survey questions is available on GitHub. The survey data has been decoupled into: survey-results-key.csv - maps a question number and the responses to the actual question values. q1-16-survey-results.csv- the non-demographic component of the survey responses (Q1-Q16). q19-23-demographics.csv - the demographic part of the survey (Q19-Q21, Q23). q17-institutions.csv - the institution/location of the respondent (Q17). q18-funding.csv - funding sources within the last 5 years (Q18). Please note the code that has been used to do the analysis will not run with the decoupled survey data.  Other data files included CleanedLocations.csv - normalised version of the institutions that the survey respondents volunteered. DTPs.csv - information on the UKRI Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) scaped from the UKRI DTP contacts web page in October 2021. projectsearch-1646403729132.csv.gz - data snapshot from the UKRI Gateway to Research released on the 24th February 2022 made available under an Open Government Licence. locations.csv - latitude and longitude for the institutions in the cleaned locations. subjects.csv - research classifications for the ESRC projects for the 24th February data snapshot. topics.csv - topic classification for the ESRC projects for the 24th February data snapshot. Interview transcripts The interview transcripts have been anonymised and converted to markdown so that it's easier to process in general. List of interview transcripts: 1269794877.md 1578450175.md 1792505583.md 2964377624.md 3270614512.md 40983347262.md 4288358080.md 4561769548.md 4938919540.md 5037840428.md 5766299900.md 5996360861.md 6422621713.md 6776362537.md 7183719943.md 7227322280.md 7336263536.md 75909371872.md 7869268779.md 8031500357.md 9253010492.md Data Management Plan The study's Data Management Plan is provided in PDF format and shows the different data sets used throughout the duration of the study and where they have been deposited, as well as how long the SSI will keep these records. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.7785710
 
Title Dataset - Understanding the software and data used in the social sciences 
Description This is a repository for a UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project to understand the software used to analyse social sciences data. Any software produced has been made available under a BSD 2-Clause license and any data and other non-software derivative is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International License. Note that the software that analysed the survey is provided for illustrative purposes - it will not work on the decoupled anonymised data set. Exceptions to this are: Data from the UKRI ESRC is mostly made available under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Licence. Data from Gateway to Research is made available under an Open Government Licence (Version 3.0). Contents Survey data & analysis: esrc_data-survey-analysis-data.zip Other data: esrc_data-other-data.zip Transcripts: esrc_data-transcripts.zip Data Management Plan: esrc_data-dmp.zip Survey data & analysis The survey ran from 3rd February 2022 to 6th March 2023 during which 168 responses were received. Of these responses, three were removed because they were supplied by people from outside the UK without a clear indication of involvement with the UK or associated infrastructure. A fourth response was removed as both came from the same person which leaves us with 164 responses in the data. The survey responses, Question (Q) Q1-Q16, have been decoupled from the demographic data, Q17-Q23. Questions Q24-Q28 are for follow-up and have been removed from the data. The institutions (Q17) and funding sources (Q18) have been provided in a separate file as this could be used to identify respondents. Q17, Q18 and Q19-Q23 have all been independently shuffled. The data has been made available as Comma Separated Values (CSV) with the question number as the header of each column and the encoded responses in the column below. To see what the question and the responses correspond to you will have to consult the survey-results-key.csv which decodes the question and responses accordingly.  A pdf copy of the survey questions is available on GitHub. The survey data has been decoupled into: survey-results-key.csv - maps a question number and the responses to the actual question values. q1-16-survey-results.csv- the non-demographic component of the survey responses (Q1-Q16). q19-23-demographics.csv - the demographic part of the survey (Q19-Q21, Q23). q17-institutions.csv - the institution/location of the respondent (Q17). q18-funding.csv - funding sources within the last 5 years (Q18). Please note the code that has been used to do the analysis will not run with the decoupled survey data.  Other data files included CleanedLocations.csv - normalised version of the institutions that the survey respondents volunteered. DTPs.csv - information on the UKRI Doctoral Training Partnerships (DTPs) scaped from the UKRI DTP contacts web page in October 2021. projectsearch-1646403729132.csv.gz - data snapshot from the UKRI Gateway to Research released on the 24th February 2022 made available under an Open Government Licence. locations.csv - latitude and longitude for the institutions in the cleaned locations. subjects.csv - research classifications for the ESRC projects for the 24th February data snapshot. topics.csv - topic classification for the ESRC projects for the 24th February data snapshot. Interview transcripts The interview transcripts have been anonymised and converted to markdown so that it's easier to process in general. List of interview transcripts: 1269794877.md 1578450175.md 1792505583.md 2964377624.md 3270614512.md 40983347262.md 4288358080.md 4561769548.md 4938919540.md 5037840428.md 5766299900.md 5996360861.md 6422621713.md 6776362537.md 7183719943.md 7227322280.md 7336263536.md 75909371872.md 7869268779.md 8031500357.md 9253010492.md Data Management Plan The study's Data Management Plan is provided in PDF format and shows the different data sets used throughout the duration of the study and where they have been deposited, as well as how long the SSI will keep these records. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2023 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.7785711
 
Title International RSE Survey 2022 
Description A pre-final release of the survey data to feedback on anything that's missing or needs correction. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2022 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact Additional evidence for importance of Research Software Engineers. New information on RSE practices. 
URL https://zenodo.org/record/6884882
 
Title STRIDE Research Software Engineering COVID-19 interview study dataset and materials. 
Description This dataset contains results from an interview study deployed between April and June 2020 to understand the changing situation in research software engineering work environments as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study took place over an eight-week period, during which 17 self-identified research software engineers (RSEs) recorded their thoughts about the impact of the pandemic on their work and lifestyles. Each weekly entry included a series of questions based on the agile software engineering retrospective, a technique used within agile teams to look back on previous work. The first week followed a basic retrospective format, asking participants to assess what went well and didn't go well, and to identify areas that could be improved going forward. To encourage ongoing participation, questions in subsequent weeks were adapted from creative retrospective plans designed by agile practitioners. An invitation to take part was issued via various international RSE social media channels in two batches, resulting in 11 participants starting in the week commencing on the 6th of April, and six starting in the week of the 20th of April. In total, 17 participants responded to the invitation; 15 agreed to participate after the first week. Participants were sent an email each week inviting them to complete a diary entry for a total of eight weeks; data were collected through a survey deployed via JISC's Online Surveys. The consent form and a pdf of the first week of questions are included in the materials to provide an example of how the survey was administered. The entry week and questions are reported in full in columns A and B in the spreadsheet accordingly. To avoid identification of individuals, demographic information and some contextual information has been redacted. Redactions are indicated by *** in the response. The study was conducted as part of the STRIDE project: https://stride.org.uk. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://figshare.manchester.ac.uk/articles/dataset/STRIDE_Research_Software_Engineering_COVID-19_int...
 
Title STRIDE Research Software Engineering COVID-19 interview study dataset and materials. 
Description This dataset contains results from an interview study deployed between April and June 2020 to understand the changing situation in research software engineering work environments as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study took place over an eight-week period, during which 17 self-identified research software engineers (RSEs) recorded their thoughts about the impact of the pandemic on their work and lifestyles. Each weekly entry included a series of questions based on the agile software engineering retrospective, a technique used within agile teams to look back on previous work. The first week followed a basic retrospective format, asking participants to assess what went well and didn't go well, and to identify areas that could be improved going forward. To encourage ongoing participation, questions in subsequent weeks were adapted from creative retrospective plans designed by agile practitioners. An invitation to take part was issued via various international RSE social media channels in two batches, resulting in 11 participants starting in the week commencing on the 6th of April, and six starting in the week of the 20th of April. In total, 17 participants responded to the invitation; 15 agreed to participate after the first week. Participants were sent an email each week inviting them to complete a diary entry for a total of eight weeks; data were collected through a survey deployed via JISC's Online Surveys.The consent form and a pdf of the first week of questions are included in the materials to provide an example of how the survey was administered. The entry week and questions are reported in full in columns A and B in the spreadsheet accordingly. To avoid identification of individuals, demographic information and some contextual information has been redacted. Redactions are indicated by *** in the response.The study was conducted as part of the STRIDE project: https://stride.org.uk. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
URL https://figshare.manchester.ac.uk/articles/dataset/STRIDE_Research_Software_Engineering_COVID-19_int...
 
Description AstraZeneca Training 
Organisation AstraZeneca
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution Delivery of intermediate research software development course to researchers at AstraZeneca UK.
Collaborator Contribution Hosting of courses and provision of feedback on material.
Impact Improved course materials, hosted here: https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/python-intermediate-development/
Start Year 2022
 
Description British Computer Society 
Organisation British Computer Society (BCS)
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Provision of expert knowledge and data about the research software engineering landscape in the UK and internationally.
Collaborator Contribution Provision of expert knowledge about UK IT policy.
Impact N/A at present
Start Year 2021
 
Description HDR-UK Curriculum Development 
Organisation Health Data Research UK
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Contributing expert knowledge to assist in design of training curriculum.
Collaborator Contribution Information and feedback on training requirements for health data researchers.
Impact Development of training curriculum for health data researchers.
Start Year 2019
 
Description Society of Research Software Engineering 
Organisation Society of Research Software Engineering
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Members of research team have been appointed as trustees of the organisation.
Collaborator Contribution Assistance in running bi-annual international survey of Research Software Engineers.
Impact In progress.
Start Year 2019
 
Description Software Preservation Network 
Organisation Software Preservation Network
Country United States 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Collaboration on Software Preservation Network's Training and Education Working Group to develop resources around software preservation. Also input into SPN's future strategic direction through steering committee.
Collaborator Contribution Collaboration on Software Preservation Network's Training and Education Working Group to develop resources around software preservation.
Impact This collaboration is multi-disciplinary. Outputs have not yet been published.
Start Year 2018
 
Description The Carpentries 
Organisation The Carpentries
Country United States 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Coordination of Carpentries training events in the UK. Training of Carpentries instructors. Contribution of training material. Facilitation of development of new courses for social sciences and life sciences.
Collaborator Contribution Production of training materials. Provision of central administrative infrastructure. Governance of open source materials production. Organisation of international workshops.
Impact Multi-disciplinary. Training of hundreds of researchers in basic software engineering and data management and analysis skills.
Start Year 2018
 
Title 2022 International RSE Survey Analysis Code 
Description Code to analyse the data from the 2022 International Research Software Engineers Survey. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2022 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact Improved understanding of current state of RSE practice and demographics 
URL https://github.com/softwaresaved/international-survey-2022
 
Title RSE Diversity Analysis Notebooks 
Description Jupyter notebooks to support submission of paper "Understanding Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Challenges Within the Research Software Community" to SE4Science21 workshop. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2021 
Open Source License? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/record/4538520
 
Title RSE Diversity Analysis Notebooks 
Description Jupyter notebooks to support submission of paper "Understanding Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity Challenges Within the Research Software Community" to SE4Science21 workshop. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2021 
Open Source License? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/record/4538521
 
Title Software Sustainability Institute Event Organisation Guide (SSI-EOG) 
Description The Software Sustainability Institute Event Organisation Guide (SSI-EOG) is host on Read the Docs - https://event-organisation-guide.readthedocs.io The GitHub project is available at - https://github.com/softwaresaved/event-organisation-guide The page is the release on Zenodo - https://zenodo.org/record/3970898 (the citation information on this page should be used when citing SSI-EOG, individual pages can be referenced from the Read the Docs site). 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2020 
Open Source License? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/record/3970898
 
Title softwaresaved/esrc-software-study: Code release for Zenodo 
Description Code release for Zenodo. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2022 
Open Source License? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8086305
 
Title softwaresaved/esrc-software-study: Code release for Zenodo 
Description Code release for Zenodo. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2022 
Open Source License? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.8086306
 
Description Article in Nature on UK REF 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact SSI Director of Strategy, Simon Hettrick, was featured in a new Nature article titled The Human Costs of the Research-Assessment Culture.The article explores the impact of the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) on the lives of those involved in research, it highlights Simon's work advocating for recognising the contributions of research software and other non-traditional outputs in research.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02922-4
 
Description Article in Research Professional on HiddenREF 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Awareness raising of HiddenREF initiative through article in ResearchProfessional
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-views-of-the-uk-2020-2-hidden-ref-reveals-unsung...
 
Description Article on HiddenREF for WonkHE 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Awareness raising through article in WonkHE
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://wonkhe.com/blogs/the-hidden-ref-celebrates-the-whole-research-ecosystem/
 
Description Article on HiddenREF in Times Higher Education 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Part of media engagement campaign around HiddenREF, by SSI Co-I and Deputy Director Simon Hettrick.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/hidden-ref-will-highlight-researchs-unacknowledged-heroes
 
Description ByteSizedRSE 
Form Of Engagement Activity A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press)
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Monthly ByteSizedRSE podcasts covering different software engineering topics for research software engineers looking to improve their practice.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022,2023
URL https://codeforthought.buzzsprout.com/
 
Description HiddenREF 2021 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The HiddenREF 2021 competition was an initiative led by the Software Sustainability Institute to recognise previously hidden contributions to UK research, including under-recognised roles and research outputs. It attracted 120 entries from over 50 organisations with research collaborations worldwide. There were over 9,000 unique visitors to the website, and 7 awards were given out at a virtual awards ceremony in September 2021.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020,2021,2022
URL https://hidden-ref.org/
 
Description HiddenREF award ceremony 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact News reporting on HiddenREF awards ceremony recognising the importance and impact of the event
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-political-science-blog-2024-12-hidden-research-role...
 
Description Interviewed for Nature feature article 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Neil Chue Hong was interviewed for and quoted in a Nature feature article on "Ten computer codes that transformed science".
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00075-2
 
Description Interviewed for Nature feature article on reproducibility 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Carole Goble was interviewed for and quoted in a Nature feature article on "Challenge to scientists: does you ten-year-old code still run?"
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020,2021
URL https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02462-7
 
Description Invited talk Dutch eScience Centre strategic retreat 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact the only invited presentation for the Dutch eScience Center retreat. Topic on software & collaboration.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://www.esciencecenter.nl/
 
Description Invited talk Whither Open Science? PHIL_OS Exploratory Conference, Exeter, UK 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact A presentation given at https://opensciencestudies.eu/whither-open-science/ , Whither Open Science? PHIL_OS Exploratory Conference, Exeter, UK The focus of the talk is about how can we deliver open science digital Infrastructure when researchers and funders can't, won't or don't pay for it.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://opensciencestudies.eu/whither-open-science/
 
Description Keynote: International funders workshop, The Future of Research Software, 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact International funders workshop, The Future of Research Software, 8 & 9 November 2022 Amsterdam The Research Software Alliance (ReSA) and the Netherlands eScience Center hosted a two-day international workshop to set the future agenda for national and international funders to support sustainable research software
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://future-of-research-software.org/
 
Description Opening talk, 2nd International Funders Workshop: The Future of Research Software 18-20 Sept 2023 Montreal, Canada 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact Opening invited talk, 2nd International Funders Workshop: The Future of Research Software 18-20 Sept 2023 Montreal, Canada (hybrid), What is Research Software? And why is it critical to the research endeavour?
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
URL https://adore.software/international-research-software-funders-workshop/
 
Description Press coverage of Air Quality Stripes 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Press coverage around the launch of the Air Quality Stripes website
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://theconversation.com/these-colourful-diagrams-show-how-air-quality-has-changed-in-over-100-co...
 
Description RSECon23 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Attendance with exhibition stand and keynote talk at RSECon23 in Newcastle, UK. Engaged with many attendees.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023