Cultivating research software

Mötesplats Rydberg abstract:

Software is fundamental to research and it is far more important than anybody knows. From short, thrown-together temporary scripts, through an abundance of complex spreadsheets analysing collected data, to millions of lines of code behind international efforts such as the Large Hadron Collider and the Square Kilometre Array, scientific research software has made an invaluable contribution to advancing our knowledge.

Software sustainability is slowly being recognized as a major obstacle in scientific research. Sustainability means that the software you use today will be available - and continue to be improved and supported - in the future. Many researchers invest considerable amount of time into the development and
maintenance of software for their research, but this time is not rewarded in the same way as time that is invested into actual research.

The UK-based Software Sustainability Institute (SSI) is a unique, leading international authority on research software sustainability, working with researchers, funders, software engineers, managers, and other stakeholders across the research spectrum. In this talk the institute director will introduce the vision, goals and activities of SSI that will be followed by the presentation of a large-scale research software survey carried out in UK. Neil will also propose best practices for working with research software and provide top tips to help with selection, development, maintenance, reuse and crediting of scientific software.