The Skills and Training for Research Software (STaRS) Forum is a collaboration of skills and training organisations committed to supporting research software, and those who develop it, as fundamental and vital to research. Skills and training organisations/initiatives are those efforts that develop curricula and learning pathways that support research software development, primarily at international, national, and/or disciplinary levels.
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 STaRS 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:
- Mapping of current offerings
- Sharing of best practices in curriculum design
- Sharing material and collaborative curriculum design
- Approaches to demonstrating need and impact
- Integration into broader research/open science/open source software training initiatives
For further information, please refer to the Terms of Reference
Membership is open to any skills and training organisations/initiatives that focus on developing curricula and learning pathways to support the development of research software.
Examples of/types:
- International research software training initiatives (e.g., Code Refinery, rOpenSci, PyOpenSci)
- National research software training initiatives (e.g., US-RSE and de-RSE working groups on this)
- Broader international initiatives for a range of digital skills (e.g., The Carpentries, SKILLS4EOSC, CODATA-RDA School of Research Data Science, Turing Way)
Members can suggest other organisations that support research software skills and training to join, or potential participants can contact ReSA for information on joining.
