Report on the Second Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE2)

This technical report records and discusses the Second Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE2). The report includes a description of the alternative, experimental submission and review process, two workshop keynote presentations, a series of lightning talks, a discussion on sustainability, and five discussions from the topic areas of exploring sustainability; software development experiences; credit & incentives; reproducibility & reuse & sharing; and code testing & code review. For each topic, the report includes a list of tangible actions that were proposed and that would lead to potential change. The workshop recognized that reliance on scientific software is pervasive in all areas of world-leading research today. The workshop participants then proceeded to explore different perspectives on the concept of sustainability. Key enablers and barriers of sustainable scientific software were identified from their experiences. In addition, recommendations with new requirements such as software credit files and software prize frameworks were outlined for improving practices in sustainable software engineering. There was also broad consensus that formal training in software development or engineering was rare among the practitioners. Significant strides need to be made in building a sense of community via training in software and technical practices, on increasing their size and scope, and on better integrating them directly into graduate education programs. Finally, journals can define and publish policies to improve reproducibility, whereas reviewers can insist that authors provide sufficient information and access to data and software to allow them reproduce the results in the paper. Hence a list of criteria is compiled for journals to provide to reviewers so as to make it easier to review software submitted for publication as a “Software Paper.

Summary of the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1)

Challenges related to development, deployment, and maintenance of reusable software for science are becoming a growing concern. Many scientists’ research increasingly depends on the quality and availability of software upon which their works are built. To highlight some of these issues and share experiences, the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1) was held in November 2013 in conjunction with the SC13 Conference. The workshop featured keynote presentations and a large number (54) of solicited extended abstracts that were grouped into three themes and presented via panels. A set of collaborative notes of the presentations and discussion was taken during the workshop. Unique perspectives were captured about issues such as comprehensive documentation, development and deployment practices, software licenses and career paths for developers. Attribution systems that account for evidence of software contribution and impact were also discussed. These include mechanisms such as Digital Object Identifiers, publication of “software papers”, and the use of online systems, for example source code repositories like GitHub. This paper summarizes the issues and shared experiences that were discussed, including cross-cutting issues and use cases. It joins a nascent literature seeking to understand what drives software work in science, and how it is impacted by the reward systems of science. These incentives can determine the extent to which developers are motivated to build software for the long-term, for the use of others, and whether to work collaboratively or separately. It also explores community building, leadership, and dynamics in relation to successful scientific software

Report on the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3)

This report records and discusses the Third Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE3). The report includes a description of the keynote presentation of the workshop, which served as an overview of sustainable scientific software. It also summarizes a set of lightning talks in which speakers highlighted to-the-point lessons and challenges pertaining to sustaining scientific software. The final and main contribution of the report is a summary of the discussions, future steps, and future organization for a set of self-organized working groups on topics including developing pathways to funding scientific software; constructing useful common metrics for crediting software stakeholders; identifying principles for sustainable software engineering design; reaching out to research software organizations around the world; and building communities for software sustainability. For each group, we include a point of contact and a landing page that can be used by those who want to join that group's future activities. The main challenge left by the workshop is to see if the groups will execute these activities that they have scheduled, and how the WSSSPE community can encourage this to happen

Repository Interface for Overlaid Journal Archives: costs estimates and sustainability issues

The RIOJA project (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ls/rioja) investigated the feasibility of an overlay journal model in collaboration with the arXiv and in the scientific domain of astrophysics and cosmology. Scientists in this community are active users of e-prints repositories such as the arXiv. Furthermore, they have the support of Professional Associations and Learned Societies that have been pioneers in adapting to new publishing models and in particular electronic journals. Long term access to information as well as maintaining provision to sustainable systems/services is important to various parties in the scholarly communication system: the creators of information, developers and managers of services, libraries, publishers, funders and also users. Although scientific journals have been in existence since the 18th century (Lawal, 2001), factors such as increased journal subscription prices in the last decades and the emergence of new technologies have triggered discussions on the potential of new business models for publishing research. Furthermore, the advent of the open access movement also contributed to exploration of the issues around free access to information and provision of sustainable services. Exploring aspects of sustainability is something that should be seen over a period of time and whether launching, converting or simply maintaining a new or existing system/service the needs of the community it serves should be taken into account. Scientific journal publishing is a complex process. Besides disseminating scientific knowledge, registration of a claim for new discovery and a quality “stamp” it also facilitates social factors. Besides making research findings available and contributing to the advancement of knowledge, publishing is also a means for measuring quality of the work of scientists, allocating funding, and acknowledging contributions to knowledge. In this report, we will try to provide an overview of a new publishing model, that of the overlay journal. We will discuss the use of the arXiv by scientists in astrophysics and cosmology as well as the role of professional associations and learned societies in the publishing process for this community. We will briefly explain the methods employed to compile this report. We will also briefly present the RIOJA toolkit before we try and identify costs in the publishing process associated with the functions of registration, certification, and awareness and archiving. This report does not aim to provide a comprehensive report of actual journal publishing costings. Despite the fact that there are studies in existence that tried to document costs associated with journal publishing, the information presented there rarely corresponds to the actual costs of individual journal functions. In addition, the interviews with publishers and editors did not reveal any substantial information about costings that have not already been reported in the literature or are available on some publishers' websites. Where appropriate, this report aims to acknowledge studies conducted previously as pointers to further reading and, where applicable, to compare reported findings to observations made during the development and implementation of the RIOJA toolkit (described below). We will conclude this report with some of the issues reported in the literature around sustainability of services and some brief suggestions for further work

Open educational resources : conversations in cyberspace

172 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.Libro ElectrónicoEducation systems today face two major challenges: expanding the reach of education and improving its quality. Traditional solutions will not suffice, especially in the context of today's knowledge-intensive societies. The Open Educational Resources movement offers one solution for extending the reach of education and expanding learning opportunities. The goal of the movement is to equalize access to knowledge worldwide through openly and freely available online high-quality content. Over the course of two years, the international community came together in a series of online discussion forums to discuss the concept of Open Educational Resources and its potential. This publication makes the background papers and reports from those discussions available in print.--Publisher's description.A first forum : presenting the open educational resources (OER) movement. Open educational resources : an introductory note / Sally Johnstone -- Providing OER and related issues : an introductory note / Anne Margulies, ... [et al.] -- Using OER and related issues : in introductory note / Mohammed-Nabil Sabry, ... [et al.] -- Discussion highlights / Paul Albright -- Ongoing discussion. A research agenda for OER : discussion highlights / Kim Tucker and Peter Bateman -- A 'do-it-yourself' resource for OER : discussion highlights / Boris Vukovic -- Free and open source software (FOSS) and OER -- A second forum : discussing the OECD study of OER. Mapping procedures and users / Jan Hylén -- Why individuals and institutions share and use OER / Jan Hylén -- Discussion highlights / Alexa Joyce -- Priorities for action. Open educational resources : the way forward / Susan D'Antoni

When situativity meets objectivity in peer-production of knowledge:the case of the WikiRate platform

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to further the debate on Knowledge Artefacts (KAs), by presenting the design of WikiRate, a Collective Awareness platform whose goal is to support a wider public contributing to the generation of knowledge on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of companies.Design/methodology/approachThe material presented in the paper comes from the first-hand experience of the authors as part of the WikiRate design team. This material is reflexively discussed using concepts from the field of science and technology studies.FindingsUsing the concept of the “funnel of interest”, the authors discuss how the design of a KA like WikiRate relies on the designers’ capacity to translate general statements into particular design solutions. The authors also show how this funnelling helps understanding the interplay between situativity and objectivity in a KA. The authors show how WikiRate is a peer-production platform based on situativity, which requires a robust level of objectivity for producing reliable knowledge about the ESG performance of companies.Originality/valueThis paper furthers the debate on KAs. It presents a relevant design example and offers in the discussion a set of design and community building recommendations to practitioners

A Framework for Integrating Transportation Into Smart Cities

In recent years, economic, environmental, and political forces have quickly given rise to “Smart Cities” -- an array of strategies that can transform transportation in cities. Using a multi-method approach to research and develop a framework for smart cities, this study provides a framework that can be employed to: Understand what a smart city is and how to replicate smart city successes; The role of pilot projects, metrics, and evaluations to test, implement, and replicate strategies; and Understand the role of shared micromobility, big data, and other key issues impacting communities. This research provides recommendations for policy and professional practice as it relates to integrating transportation into smart cities

An evaluation of the Department of Health’s Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund

The Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund (HSCVF) is an innovative programme that was established in 2009 by the Department of Health (DH) to build organisational and community capacity for volunteering through a national and local grant scheme. The HSCVF has offered both funds and tailored support to health and social care projects delivered by Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations. The HSCVF is managed by a partnership led by Ecorys and with expertise from leading national voluntary sector organisations: Attend, Community Service Volunteers (CSV) and Primetimers. To date the HSCVF has funded a total of 157 local and national projects, of which 114 are currently live. This report presents findings from an evaluation of the HSCVF with a specific focus on the 2010/2011 national and local projects, conducted by a team from the Institute for Health & Wellbeing at Leeds Metropolitan University. It presents evidence on the extent to which, how and in what ways the HSCVF programme has built organisational and community capacity across the national and local HSCVF projects, as well as on the health and social outcomes that resulted

Scientific journals, overlays and repositories: a case study of costs and sustainability issues

Publishing scientific research is an area of study that attracts interest from various stakeholders such as publishers, academic and research staff, libraries and funders. In the past decade increased journal subscription fees prompted calls for cheaper and more efficient means of accessing the scientific literature. Factors such as the expansion of digital repositories, the introduction of open source journal management software, an increasing awareness within the scholarly community at large of the issues around open access, and an increasing readiness within the publishing community to experiment with new models, suggest that the circumstances may now be right for new models of scientific publishing to be explored, as well as potential business models and sustainable solutions around them. This paper explores some of the issues around the costs and sustainability of a prospective journal model known as the overlay journal. We present estimates of initial start up costs for such a model, discuss the factors that would influence scientists in deciding whether to publish in a journal overlaid onto a public repository; and report their views on the relative importance of different features and functions of a journal in terms of funding priorities

Enforcing public data archiving policies in academic publishing: A study of ecology journals

To improve the quality and efficiency of research, groups within the scientific community seek to exploit the value of data sharing. Funders, institutions, and specialist organizations are developing and implementing strategies to encourage or mandate data sharing within and across disciplines, with varying degrees of success. Academic journals in ecology and evolution have adopted several types of public data archiving policies requiring authors to make data underlying scholarly manuscripts freely available. Yet anecdotes from the community and studies evaluating data availability suggest that these policies have not obtained the desired effects, both in terms of quantity and quality of available datasets. We conducted a qualitative, interview-based study with journal editorial staff and other stakeholders in the academic publishing process to examine how journals enforce data archiving policies. We specifically sought to establish who editors and other stakeholders perceive as responsible for ensuring data completeness and quality in the peer review process. Our analysis revealed little consensus with regard to how data archiving policies should be enforced and who should hold authors accountable for dataset submissions. Themes in interviewee responses included hopefulness that reviewers would take the initiative to review datasets and trust in authors to ensure the completeness and quality of their datasets. We highlight problematic aspects of these thematic responses and offer potential starting points for improvement of the public data archiving process.Comment: 35 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl