Subgroup 3
Lead: Morane Gruenpeter, Paula Andrea Martinez
Many definitions for software and research software can be found in different articles and documents to help understand software artifacts in the scholarly ecosystem. In the FAIR 4RS WG we need to agree upon a definition of research software to identify the scope of the FAIR principles that will be discussed and documented for software by the working group.
To do so, this subgroup will review existing definitions and will specify the scope for the WG outputs. A few examples, shown at the RDA VP15 SSC IG session:
- Research Software is defined by (Hettrick et al., 2014) as: "software that is used to generate, process or analyse results that you intend to appear in a publication (either in a journal, conference paper, monograph, book or thesis)"
- Software plays a triple role in research, as stated in ([The Committee for Open Science's Free Software and Open Source Project Group, 2019])https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/opportunity-note-encouraging-a-wider-usage-of-software-derived-from-research):
- It is a tool : "it serves as a tool in many areas by effectively processing various types of data to build and test models to support or invalidate hypotheses;"
- It is a research result: "it can be a research result in its own right acting as evidence of an effective algorithmic solution to a given problem as measured by the capabilities of the computers of the day;"
- And it is a research object: "it can itself be a research object. The scientific community is particularly interested in the modes of software development and the proof of their properties especially regarding societal issues related to transparency and trust in computerized processing."
- Concise community definition of research software
If you are interested in participating then please contact both subgroup leads Morane Gruenpeter and Paula Andrea Martinez