Case study: Simulations for visualisation of complex processes and principles in chemical engineering and in physics

This paper describes two case studies where open source software (OSS) has been used to create simulations to assist students in visualising complex processes in university courses. The first case reviews the use of Python to help students visualise the motion of particles or molecules in physical processes used in chemical engineering. The second case reviews the use of VPython to allow students to create their own simulations of abstract concepts in physics

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.

The Interplay Among Software Volatility, Complexity and Development Outcomes: Evidence From Open Source Software

The study posits a mediating role of software complexity in the association between software volatility and different software development outcomes. Empirical tests using data from 326 open source software projects support such a partial mediating role of software complexity in the association between software volatility and development outcomes. Archival data is tested using an ordinary least squares mediated model. The paper uses productivity, defect count and development speed as dependent variables