Sloan funding for ReSA task force

ReSA is grateful to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for supporting the ReSA task force applying the FAIR principles to research software. The activity is also a FORCE11 and Research Data Alliance working group. The grant from the Sloan Foundation will support the FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS) Working Group to increase the FAIR community’s focus on improving software health through improved practices by engaging the research software community in the crucial first step of agreeing on the application of the FAIR principles to research software.

New ReSA Steering Committee members

In November 2020 ReSA called for nominations for new members to join the Steering Committee in 2021. There was a very strong field of nominees and we are very grateful to all those who nominated themselves. We welcome the breadth of expertise and experiences that the following new members will bring to the ReSA mission of bringing research software communities together to collaborate on the advancement of research software.

• Tania Allard: Co Director at Quansight, UK
• Juan Bicarregui: Head of the Data Division, Scientific Computing Department, Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK
• Joris van Eijnatten: General Director of the Netherlands eScience Center
• Mark Leggott: Executive Director of Research Data Canada
• Eva Mendez: Associate Professor, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
• Serah Njambi Rono: Director of Community Development and Engagement, The Carpentries, Estonia
• Lou Woodley: Director, Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement, UK

Our continuing Steering Committee members are:

• Daniel S. Katz, Chief Scientist, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois, USA
• Neil Chue Hong, Director - Software Sustainability Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK
• Andrew Treloar, Director, Platforms and Software, Australian Research Data Commons, Australia
• Karthik Ram, US Research Software Sustainability Institute (URSSI) lead, University of California, Berkeley, USA
• Chris Mentzel, Executive Director, Data Sciences, Stanford Data Science Initiative, Stanford University, USA

Welcome to our Community Manager

We are delighted to welcome Paula Andrea Martinez to our team as our Community Manager. Paula will have a major focus on coordinating the community engagement for the FAIR4RS Working Group to maximise collaboration on the development of the FAIR4RS principles. Paula is a member of multiple online communities and plays a role in empowerment, skills development, and research software advocacy. She has worked for various universities and national research institutes supporting broad and domain specific research projects. Her two personal attributes to highlight are intellectual curiosity and resilience. Through her academic and working experience she has acquired a clear understanding of research infrastructure services and data-intensive research needs. Get in touch via paula [at] researchsoft [dot] org.

FAIR4RS Update

A FAIR4RS Working Group town hall will occur on 2 February 20:00 UTC (your time conversion ) to discuss the next steps for drafting the FAIR4RS principles. Register here . This will build on the fantastic efforts of the four subgroups established in August 2020. The goal of this town hall meeting is to get community input on the next set of activities for the FAIR4RS Working Group as it begins drafting FAIR principles for research software. We welcome anyone with an interest in how the FAIR principles might be defined and applied to software and related research objects to attend and contribute. The agenda will include

• Welcome
• Aim of FAIR4RS Working Group
• Work of FAIR4RS Working Group subgroups to date

1. A fresh look at FAIR for Research Software
2. FAIR work in other contexts - draft report
3. Definition of research software
4. Review of new research related to FAIR Software

• Open discussion to propose future activities to draft the FAIR principles for research software
• Upcoming activities

Further FAIR4RS community events will be advertised through the FAIR4RS Working Group mailing list. You can subscribe to this list by joining the RDA FAIR4RS Working Group, which also entails joining RDA (free). You can also track our Working Group events through the RDA events calendar and on our community engagement table on GitHub. The minutes of this month’s FAIR4RS Working Group Steering Committee meeting are now available on GitHub, as usual. This was our first meeting open to all Working Group members, and our meetings will continue to be open. Our next monthly meeting is on 8 Feb 2021, 20:00 UTC, and you can register here.

Community news

• The context of Recognizing the value of software: a software citation guide [version 2; peer review: 2 approved] is summarised in this informative blog aimed at the research community, and this one, aimed more at the publishing community.
• The 2021 Mining Software Repositories Conference in May 2021 has a goal to improve software engineering practices by uncovering interesting and actionable information about software systems and projects using the vast amounts of software data available.
• Series of Online Research Software Events (SORSE) events in 2021 include RSE careers in France: the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) option, by Sylvain Laizet, February 23, 2021, 14:00 – 15:00 UTC.
• The results of a first survey about research software at Stanford University have just come out, with interesting results on how many staff use research survey and having adequate training in its development.
• US-RSE had its first Steering Committee election, with Julia Damerow (Arizona State), Daniel S. Katz (University of Illinois), Lance Parsons (Princeton University), and Chris Hill (MIT) elected. Next year’s elections for the other half of the committee will make US-RSE’s governance fully democratic.
• The Turing Enrichment scheme offers students currently enrolled on a doctoral programme at a UK university the opportunity to join the Turing in London for up to 12 months. Deadline to apply is Tuesday 2 February.

If you’d like to suggest items for inclusion in ReSA News then please contact us. If you would to engage with the ReSA community, then join the ReSA Google group to receive email updates. To subscribe send a blank email to research-software-alliance+subscribe@googlegroups.com

ReSA’s vision is that research software be recognised and valued as a fundamental and vital component of research worldwide. The ReSA mission is to bring research software communities together to collaborate on the advancement of research software.