Research Software Authorship and Contribution Task Force

Overview

The Task Force develops community guidelines for defining research software authorship and describing the different types of contributions and roles involved in research software. Building on previous work, it addresses the lack of widely accepted authorship criteria and a common vocabulary for describing software contributions.

The guidelines are evaluated through expert consultation, community review, and an implementation pilot. The outputs of the Task Force help researchers and research software engineers recognize and describe contributions to research software consistently, and support fair and transparent attribution of software work.

Outputs

Research Software Authorship Recommendations v0.2

As one major output of the task force, we have developed recommendations for implementing software authorship policies in research software projects. They are now available as draft version for a community pilot:

S. Druskat, N. Chue Hong, J. Colomb, H. Gruson, S. K. Bhogal, C. Martinez-Ortiz, and G. Turon. 2026. Research Software Authorship (Community Pilot Draft). (Sep. 2026). doi:10.5281/zenodo.22834409.

Help us pilot the recommendations! See details below.

Previous work

The Task Force was created as an outcome of a hack group at the Institute for Research Software’s Collaborations Workshop 2023. The initial output of this activity is:

D. Leem, G. Turon, H. Gruson, N. Chue Hong, S. Kaur Bhogal, S. Lo, S. Druskat, and S. Soiland-Reyes, SORTÆD: Software Role Taxonomy and Authorship Definition. (May 04, 2023). Zenodo. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7896456.

Help us pilot the Research Software Authorship Recommendations!

We are now looking for research software projects to pilot the recommendations and help us improve them before recommending wider adoption.

The Community Pilot runs until 30 November 2026!

This is how you can help:

  1. Read the recommendations and the AUTHORSHIP.md template.
  2. Implement the policy in your project, using the template.
  3. Once you have finished the implementation, use the pilot feedback form to tell us about your experience.

We are particularly interested in learning

  • what worked well;
  • what was unclear or difficult to implement;
  • where you had to adapt the recommendations to your project;
  • anything you found missing or not adequately covered; and
  • suggestions for improving the recommendations or template.

Please don’t fill out the feedback form just after reading the recommendations. We want the feedback to reflect the experience of actually implementing it in a project. The form should therefore be completed after you have finished implementing the policy.

The pilot is intended to be lightweight, and short feedback is very welcome.

Read the recommendations (PDF) Read the recommendations (online)

Participate in the pilot: feedback form (cryptpad.fr)

The Task Force

The task force builds on previous work to define criteria for software authorship and describe contribution types/roles in software. It aims to address

  • a lack of community guidelines and criteria for software authorship;
  • a lack of community support for any one existing contribution taxonomy/vocabulary for software.

Roadmap

Software Authorship Community Guidelines

  1. ☑ Examine relevant previous work
  2. ☑ Draft authorship guidelines v0
  3. ☑ Draft authorship guidelines v1
  4. ☑ Expert consultation and review of authorship guidelines v1
  5. ☑ Review integration in authorship guidelines v2
  6. ➔ Community pilot with authorship guidelines
  7. ☐ Pilot feedback integration in authorship guidelines v3
  8. ☐ Publish authorship guidelines v3

Software Contribution Community Guidelines

  1. ☑ Examine relevant previous work
  2. ☑ Draft contribution taxonomy v0
  3. ☐ Re-examine relevant previous work based on authorship guidelines
  4. ☐ Draft contribution taxonomy v1
  5. ☐ Expert consultation and review of taxonomy v1
  6. ☐ Review integration in taxonomy v2
  7. ☐ Community survey on taxonomy v2
  8. ☐ Survey results integration in taxonomy v3
  9. ☐ Publish contribution taxonomy v3

Task Force Members

  • Carlos Martinez-Ortiz , Netherlands eScience Center
  • Deborah Leem , University College London (UCL)
  • Gemma Turon , Fundació Ersilia Open Source Initiative, gemma@ersilia.io
  • Hugo Gruson , data.org
  • Julien Colomb , Technische Universität Berlin Berlin
  • Neil Chue Hong , University of Edinburgh / Institute for Research Software
  • Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal , Research Software Alliance
  • Stephan Druskat (chair), Technische Universität Braunschweig, s.druskat@tu-braunschweig.de

Joining the Task Force

If you are interested in joining the Task Force as an active member, please write an email to a member whose email address is listed above, stating your interest and describing any relevant experience you may have. We will then invite you to a Task Force meeting to meet the other Task Force members.