Research software: recognised and valued as a fundamental and vital component of research worldwide

Our mission

To bring research software communities together to collaborate on the advancement of research software.

ReSA themes

Software matters

A UK survey of 1,000 randomly chosen researchers showed that more than 90% of researchers acknowledged software as being important for their own research, and about 70% of researchers said that their research would not be possible without software [1]. A study of Nature papers from Jan-March 2016 reveals that “32 of the 40 papers examined mention software, and the 32 papers contain 211 mentions of distinct pieces of software, for an average of 6.5 mentions per paper.” [2].

[1] Hettrick. S. J., et al. (2014). UK Research Software Survey 2014. Data set doi:10.5281/zenodo.14809

[2] Nangia, Udit; Katz, Daniel S. (2017): Understanding Software in Research: Initial Results from Examining Nature and a Call for Collaboration. doi:10.1109/eScience.2017.78

90%	70%	6.5 avg
software important for own research	own research not possible without research	distinct software mentions per paper

Without data it’s difficult to validate results. But without code, we waste the opportunity to advance science.

Neil Chue Hong, Director, Software Sustainability Institute, Director, University of Edinburgh, UK

Our mission

To bring research software communities together to collaborate on the advancement of research software.

ReSA themes

People

Enhance social infrastructure for individuals and communities to improve software practices

Infrastructure

Identify and promote needed infrastructure

Policy

Encourage and support software recognition

Software matters

Without data it’s difficult to validate results. But without code, we waste the opportunity to advance science.