The submission of software as a research output is becoming more common. As a result a number of area need addressing and improving in the research life cycle of a software project.
The benefits to the scientific systems can be that experiments using software can be replicated and built upon more easily, and secondly research in the area of software development, discovery and reuse is aided.
Advanced software maintenance systems make use of version control systems and dependency management. The result of these two types of technologies results in the ability to have any version in a software's release history being automatically available and be able to run, where applicable. With the additions such as 'continuous integration' software can be validated to be in good working order and so ensure it is fit to be use. Building on these technologies, in the not too distant future the working environment for software making can mean that greater sustainability can be achieved, example are a project like Binder to republish Jupyter notebooks https://mybinder.org
In this editorial theme of 'software citation' we want to look at what initiatives and project are working on these issues of software citation and improving the reuse of software. We also want to look practical steps that a variety of users and public institutions can take to improve their systems for software citation.
Our these are run over a four week period, and then periodically we will revisit a theme. Our editorial approach is to support the Open Science community in its ongoing work in a given area. We do this by carrying short blog posts, engaging in discourse and support on our own forum and social media, as well as carry collaborative documents on key sources and how-tos if needed.
- A key issue is discovery and evaluation. Researchers need more information about software used in experiments, and to have access to the source code to be able to access and run the software cited.
- For software maintainers guidance is needed about what core metadata needs to be stored with the software in a similar way to how open licences and copyright notices are stored.
- Currently how to cite software is not clear or technically resolved, and secondly the documentation of basic information (metadata) that a software maker should provide is also not clearly defined so that researchers looking to use published works do not have enough information to act on.
Editorial evaluation
How to break the topic down
- How to record information to describe a software project and its contributors
- Projects going on to create systems for software citation: to record, to read, to collect, etc. Get input from different projects. What are their research questions/interim findings. We have CodeMeta, CFF, CiteAs.
- What information do journals and repositories want when submitting software
- How can citing be more useful for researchers. Is there enough information to be useful for research publication/software readers/users
- The Future: Can software cited be fully available in a – validated, CI, packet managed, dependency managed, virtualised way – so that it can be retrieved or run live. e.g, Jupyter https://jupyter.org/ and Binder to republish https://mybinder.org
- Note: we need clear guidelines or pointers to this info, for: software makers, journal submissions of software, and academic writers of scholarly literature wanting to cite software.
- Top three info sources in each area: journals, papers, software citation software project, working groups and organisations
Community: to engage
Literature and projects (Zotero)
https://www.zotero.org/groups/1838445/o-s/items/tag/software-cite
Key resources
2016 Force11 working group running through Dec' 18. Group https://www.force11.org/software-citation-principles Article https://peerj.com/articles/cs-86/
2018 Nature Software Submission Guidelines’, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-02741-4
Citation
- Theme announce: possibly we announce themes?
- Blog: Open Science Barcamp – report on software citation by moderator, Sophia Doerner sophia.doerner@hu-berlin.de
- Blog: Software Citation 'How-to' article and follow on forum – Katrin Leinweber TIB, title: Concrete advice for more sustainable scientific software projects. On private TIB Git https://git.tib.eu/leinweberk/FAIR-Data-Prinzipien-auf-Software-anwenden
- Forum/how-tos: The Software Citation community - get them onto the forum to help move things forward. I now have the contacts and literature from #OSBarcamp
- Blog/ resource: someone could give the top 3 lit, journals, projects, citation managers to use: Literature and projects (provisional) https://www.zotero.org/groups/1838445/o-s/items/tag/software-cite
- FOSTER group report
- Project: CFF Citation File Format
- Project: CodeMeta
- Project: CiteAs
- Re-use and journals. Blog. How software is described and documented so that its citation can be of use to future practitioners and readers of research publications. e.g. 2018 Nature Software Submission Guidelines’, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-02741-4
Issues and questions:
Lobby OpenAIRE to include software. Currently OpenAIRE policy is not to include it – forum issue
The Future?
Discover and run scientific code, Code Ocean https://codeocean.com/
Simulations in the browser, Jupyter https://jupyter.org/ and Binder to republish https://mybinder.org
Continuos Integration and validation, with dependencies and full contributor audit
Create a grid for the theme
To include: timeline, issues, keywords, who to name check, questions to ask.
Contacts
See software cite theme contacts