The Research Software Community Leadership Forum (CLF) supports ReSA’s vision by serving as a forum for community leaders to collaborate, share insights, and advance the research software ecosystem. It draws on the diverse expertise and perspectives of our stakeholders to ensure that decision-making is participatory and inclusive.

The CLF provides a formal mechanism for members to consider how to collectively address common challenges to achieve the significant cultural change needed across the research sector globally. It aims to:

• Identify a shared vision for the research software community, and could create longer-term outcomes such as development of a decadal plan for research software (see CODATA’s for research data)
• Identify community priorities and ultimately assist in coordination to address these
• Represent the research software community in broader international discussions of relevance to open science and/or open source scientific software, such as OECD, UNESCO, COARA, etc.

Membership is comprised of representatives from two stakeholder groups:

1. Each of ReSA’s stakeholder forums will elect two representatives to the CLF. These elected members will bring forward the insights, concerns, and contributions of their respective communities to inform the wider leadership dialogue. The current ReSA stakeholder forums are:

• Research Software Infrastructure (RSI) Forum - for infrastructure organisations that serve research software and that seek to help identify and resolve gaps and points of friction in using infrastructures in various research software use cases.
• Research Software Policy (RSP) Forum - for policymakers that focus on research, open science, and open source software, and influence policy at the national, regional, and/or international level.
• Metascience and Research Software (MaRS) Forum - for stakeholders that conduct research to understand implications of research software on the research ecosystem, particularly on the research process.
• Publishing Research Software (PubSoft) Forum - for publishers that share academic research and scholarship, including both traditional publishers that publish text and/or software papers.
• Skills and Training for Research Software (STaRS) Forum - for skills and training organisations/initiatives that focus on developing curricula and learning pathways to support the development of research software.
• International Council of RSE Associations

2. An open nomination process to ensure representation of stakeholders not already engaged through ReSA forums. The nomination process for missing voices is through self-nomination. The key criteria for nominees is their ability to represent a missing stakeholder group, with evidence of engagement with and representation of that group for this nomination. ReSA will also conduct targeted outreach to identify and encourage participation from missing voices, such as research support infrastructures and university consortia.

Time commitment

CLF representatives serve three-year terms, with an annual time commitment of approximately 5–10 hours. This includes attending 1–2 online meetings each year, as well as participating in asynchronous discussions. Members are expected to act as liaisons between the CLF and their stakeholder groups, bringing forward relevant perspectives, priorities, and insights to support inclusive leadership in the research software community.

For further information, please refer to the CLF Nomination Process or the Terms of Reference or email info@researchsoft.org.

Current members

• Bhavesh Patel, FAIR Data Innovations Hub
• Caroline Jay, Software Sustainability Institute
• Chris Erdmann, SciLifeLab
• Claire Wyatt, Forschungszentrum Jülich
• Erika Pastrana, Springer Nature
• Florian Goth, University of Würzburg/teachingRSE project
• Florian Mannseicher, de-RSE
• Fotis Psomopoulos, EVERSE
• Kazuhiro Hayashi, NISTEP
• Malvika Sharan, St Jude’s/OLS
• Nicolas Palopoli, MetaDocencia
• Rebecca Ringuette, NASA
• Rena Bakhshi, Netherlands eScience Center
• Richard Littauer, CURIOSS, SustainOSS
• Sara Villa, Turing Way/OLS
• Samantha Ahern, Carpentries
• Sean Goggins, CHAOSS
• Seun Olufemi, Bioinformatics Outreach Nigeria
• Simon Hettrick, Software Sustainability Institute
• Todd Gamblin, High Performance Software Foundation
• Weronika Filinger, EPCC, University of Edinburgh