Reproducibility and Open Research Software

Abstract: Making results more transparent, accessible and reproducible can contribute to better and more efficient research. However, widespread adoption of open research practices has not yet been achieved, although funding agencies are increasingly requiring research products (such as publications, data and software) to be made openly available. In addition to having a positive impact on research communities, the economy and society, open research practices are associated with benefits to individual researchers including increases in citations, media attention, potential collaboration, job and funding opportunities. In this talk I will discuss the barriers we face to sharing and getting credit for research software, and how to overcome them in order to reap the benefits associated with open research practices.

Bio: Rachael Ainsworth is the Research Software Community Manager for the Software Sustainability Institute and is based at the University of Manchester. She was previously an astrophysical researcher and studied the radio properties of newly-forming Sun-like stars. She is passionate about openness, transparency, reproducibility, wellbeing and inclusion in STEM, and recently delivered a TEDx talk (https://youtu.be/c-bemNZ-IqA) on how openness can help fix a broken research culture. She is also a Software Sustainability Institute Fellow, FOSTER Open Science Trainer, Mozilla Open Leader, and established the Manchester women in data community HER+Data MCR.