Research Software Alliance joins the CS&S Fiscally Sponsored Project Program

CS&S welcomes the Research Software Alliance (ReSa) to our Fiscally Sponsored Project Program. ReSA’s mission is to bring research software communities together to collaborate on the advancement of research software. We share ReSA’s vision that research software is valued as a fundamental and vital component of research worldwide. CS&S supports open collaboration in public interest technology. Research and the technology that advances is a core part of our mission. We envision a future where communities build technology infrastructure that reflect their values, and we believe that ReSA is on the path to making a significant impact in how software impacts research, and those that create and sustain it, are valued. We are thrilled to support their team to advocate for research software, given software’s critical role in contemporary research practices.

The Project

A wide range of research software organisations and programs exist internationally to address the varied challenges in software productivity, quality, reproducibility, and sustainability.

ReSA aims to coordinate across these efforts to leverage investments by:

  • Promoting the inclusion of software as a first-class research output
  • Improving the ecosystem of research software from the technology through to the social structures that support it
  • Influencing decision makers to value research software and the people who develop it

Recent achievements:

  • Development of research software sharing guidelines for policy makers, funder, publishers and research community in RDA COVID-19 Guidelines and Recommendations
  • Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Research Data Alliance (RDA) to clearly announce our intention to coordinate their efforts in areas and activities that involve both research data and software
  • Support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
     

Current work:

  • Co-leadership of the FAIR 4 Research Software Working Group (FAIR4RS WG) with RDA and FORCE11, in recognition of the importance of this work for the advancement of the research sector. FAIR4RS WG will enable coordination of a range of existing community-led discussions on how to define and effectively apply FAIR principles to research software, to achieve adoption of these principles.
  • Creation of the FAIR for Research Software Roadmap. This will identify key stakeholders in areas arising from the application of the FAIR principles to research software, to guide strategic planning and investment and enable mapping of existing FAIR for research software projects into a longer-term framework to improve strategic alignment and potential collaborators/leads for parts of the Roadmap; identification of opportunities for existing FAIR data initiatives to incorporate a focus on FAIR research software; and identification of Roadmap elements that are specific to research software and that have not been covered by FAIR for data initiatives.
  • Promoting the inclusion of software in the draft revision of the OECD Committee for Science and Technology Policy’s Enhanced Access to Publicly Funded Data for Science, Technology and Innovation (which will become soft law when passed later this year).

The People

CS&S is particularly excited to work with the incredible ReSA team to sustain this important initiative. The Director of ReSA is Dr Michelle Barker. Michelle has extensive expertise in open science, research software, digital workforce capability and digital research infrastructure. As a sociologist, Michelle is passionate about building collaborative partnerships to achieve system change.

Michelle recently chaired the OECD Global Science Forum expert group on digital skills for the research sector, is an Advisory Committee Member of the US Software Sustainability Institute (URSSI), and has co-convened conferences including the IEEE International Conference on e-Science, Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE), International Workshop on Science Gateways and eResearch Australasia. She is a former Director of the Australian Research Data Commons, where she led the strategic planning for the Australian government’s $180 million, five-year investment in ARDC, the national research software infrastructure investment program, and developed a national strategy to enhance digital workforce capacity in the research sector.

ReSA’s Steering Committee is comprised of:

  • Daniel S. Katz, Assistant Director for Scientific Software and Applications, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois, USA
  • Neil Chue Hong, CEO, Software Sustainability Institute, UK
  • Catherine Jones, Software Engineering Group Leader, STFC, UK
  • Andrew Treloar, Director,  Platforms and Engagements, Australian Research Data Commons, Australia
  • Karthik Ram, URSSI lead, University of California, Berkeley, USA
  • Chris Mentzel, Executive Director, Stanford University, USA

Get involved

ReSA is a community of influencers and members of major research software communities, programs, organisations and individuals. You can become a member by by sending a

blank email to [email protected]

Find ReSA online at https://www.researchsoft.org/ and on Twitter @ResearchSoft