The Publishing Research Software (PubSoft) Forum is a collaboration of publishers committed to supporting research software, and those who develop it, as fundamental and vital to research. Publishers are organisations/initiatives that share academic research and scholarship. This includes both traditional publishers that publish text and/or software papers.
Software has become an essential constituent of research and research software is starting to be seen as an equal partner of research data in key international policy documents such as UNESCO and the OECD. However, support and recognition of the importance of research software and the people who develop and maintain it, has failed to keep pace with the scale of use of research software in research.
The PubSoft Forum provides a formal mechanism for members to share practices and consider how to individually and collectively address common challenges to achieve the significant cultural change needed across the research sector globally. It aims to address topics such as:
- Policy alignment
- Policy implementation
- Incentives and enforcements to support researcher citation of research software
- Audit of current publisher practices to improve research software metadata quality and quality of software records, to work towards standardisation
- Consistent approaches to monitoring, benchmarking and measuring progress
- Alignment with broader efforts to improve citation of other digital objects
For further information, please refer to the Terms of Reference
Membership is open to any publishers that share academic research and scholarship, including both traditional publishers that publish text and/or software papers.
Examples of/types:
- Traditional academic journals (e.g., F1000, PLOS, Taylor & Francis, IEEE)
- Disciplinary academic journals (e.g., American Geophysical Union (AGU))
- Publisher consortia (e.g., STM Association)
Members can suggest other organisations that support research software publishing to join, or potential participants can contact ReSA for information on joining.
