1. “Doing Science
www.software.ac.uk
Properly in the
Digital Age”
UK e-Infrastructure Academic User Community Forum
12 September 2012, Digital Research 2012, Oxford
Neil Chue Hong (@npch)
N.ChueHong@software.ac.uk
Software Sustainability Institute

2. The Software Sustainability
Institute www.software.ac.uk
A national facility for cultivating world-
class research through software
• Better software enables better research
• Software reaches boundaries in its
development cycle that prevent
improvement, growth and adoption
• Providing the expertise and services
needed to negotiate to the next stage
• Developing the policy and tools to
support the community developing and
using research software
Supported by EPSRC
Software Sustainability Institute Grant EP/H043160/1

3. UK Research Computing
Ecosystem www.software.ac.uk
People
Computing Software Communities Data Centres
…
Network/Collaboration
Instruments
Software Sustainability Institute

4. Observation 1:
Software is www.software.ac.uk
pervasive across
research
Corollary: software is bleeding edge and long-tail
Demanding users are coming from arts + humanities,
economics, and social science as well as sciences
Software Sustainability Institute

5. Observation 2:
A culture of re-use
www.software.ac.uk
rather than re-
invention is not
widespread
Corollary: we have wasted effort and increased siloing
Software Sustainability Institute

6. Observation 3: www.software.ac.uk
Many people are
“embarrassed”
about software
Corollary: something is broken in the way we regard,
recognise and reward software
Software Sustainability Institute

7. The Foundations of
Digital Research www.software.ac.uk
Re- Re-usable
search Re-producible
Software Careers
Software Recognition /
Reward
Software Skills and Capability
Software Sustainability Institute

8. Gap 1: Software Skills Training
www.software.ac.uk
Research
Software Summer
Focussed Schools
Carpentry
(methods)
Who fills this gap?
HPC Short
Courses
MSc in HPC /
scientific
computing
Advanced HPC
Training
Programming
Focussed Programming Programming
(Tools) 101 201
Basic Advanced
Software Sustainability Institute

9. Software philosophy
as part of the process www.software.ac.uk
• Foundations of scientific computing in
undergraduate courses
 Like presentation skills
• Methods of scientific computing in
postgraduate courses
 Like statistics and ethics
• Show the benefits from the knowledge and
methods of digital research
 Not just programming 101
Software Sustainability Institute

10. Gap 2: Lack of support
infrastructure www.software.ac.uk
• For example: no digital repository which
satisfies the criteria:
 Open to anyone in the UK to archive software
 Software associated with an OSI license
 Provide a unique, permanent identifier
 Publishes a preservation/curation/sustainability
plan
• This is just deposit, not even preservation or
sustainability
Software Sustainability Institute

11. Gap 3: Lack of recognition
and reward www.software.ac.uk
• Is there an anachronism in the way we conduct
and recognise research?
 REF references software as an output but it is still not
easy to get recognition
• Software careers
 Researchers who use software
 Researcher-Developers
 Research Software Engineers
 Research Software Support
 Research Systems Providers
Software Sustainability Institute

12. Gap 4: Software Maturity and
Management www.software.ac.uk
Not all software should make
it to the next stage
Software proliferation
Management changes through
time, requiring planning
Innovation Consolidation Customisation
Time
Software Sustainability Institute

13. A More Manageable Ecosystem
www.software.ac.uk
• Discourage duplicative software development in
research grants by rewarding reuse and long-term
development
 Need to change perceptions so that software is seen as
valuable
 But understand when it should not proceed to next stage
• Different stages should be managed and funded
separately
 Maintenance vs. research vs. development
• A skilled researcher base is the key in the digital age
 Create a larger proportion of enabled researchers and
provide the ramps to go from desktop to high-end
infrastructure
 Allow and encourage specialism and collaboration
Software Sustainability Institute