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Information and Scientific Publicationsdoi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.678226Beyond EMI: A Roadmap to Open Collaboration9 April 2013, EGI Community Forum, ManchesterNeil Chue Hong (@npch)ORCID: [email protected]

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longer easy to define, let alone sustain

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What do we choose to identify:- Workflow?- Software that runs workflow?- Software referenced by workflow?- Software dependencies? What’s the minimum citable part?

Boundary

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Algorithm

Function

Prog

ram

Library / Suite / Package

…

Granularity

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Versioning

Personalv1

Personal v2

Personalv3

Personal v2a

Public v1

Personal v3a

Personal v2a

Public v2

Public v3

Why do we version?- To indicate a change- To allow sharing- To confer special status

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AuthorshipAuthorship• Which authors have had what impact on each version of the software?• Who had the largest contribution to the scientific results in a paper?

http://beyond-impact.org/?p=175

OGSA-DAI projects statistics from Ohloh

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5 Stars of Research Software

• Community There is a community infrastructure

• Open Software has permissive license

• Defined Accurate metadata for the software

• Extensible Usable, modifiable for my purpose

• Runnable I can access and run software

C

O

DE

R

c.f.5 Stars of Linked Data (Berners-Lee)5 Stars of Online Journals (Shotton)

“Golden Star”Originally by SsolbergjCC-BY

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metadata about software makes it easier to reuse and maintain

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Discoverable Software

• To grow a community around software, first it must be discoverable For users, wanting to find a solution For developers, wanting to reuse or extend For funders, wanting to promote or feature

• For sustainability Provide useful information Make it easier to attract and add contributors Enable dormant projects to re-activate?

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Software Hub Prototyping

What information is useful?Do both provider and

user benefit?

What can be imported from other sites?What metadata must be collected to produce this information?Is it possible or easy to collect?

How do people search for software?

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Types of Metadata

• Name• Provenance and Ownership• Functionality and Constraints• Content and Composition• Environment and Dependencies• Location

• See also: Significant Properties of Software (Matthews et al) Software Ontology (Malone et al)

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Journal of Open Research Software

http://openresearchsoftware.metajnl.com

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Ten tips for citing scientific software

1. Describe any software that played a critical part in your research, so that a peer can understand, repeat, validate and reuse your research.

2. There are many options for describing the software you have used: footnotes, acknowledgements, methods sections, and appendices.

3. Be aware that a license may place you under an obligation to attribute the use of software in your publication.

4. Cite papers that describe software as a complement to, not a replacement for, citing the software itself.5. In the first draft of a paper, always put software citations in references or bibliographies.6. Be prepared to debate with reviewers why you have cited the software: you want to acknowledge the

contribution of the software's authors and the value of software as a legitimate research output.7. Inform reviewers if you are legally obliged to cite the software because of a clause in the software's

license.8. If a reviewer disagrees with a formal software citation, you can still make a general reference to the

software in the paper.9. Recommended citations may not have enough information to accurately describe the software that was

used - you may need to add more detail yourself.10. If the software has a DOI (digital object identifier) use it to cite the software. If the software has its own

website, use the website's URL for the citation.

http://www.software.ac.uk/how-cite-and-describe-software

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Alternative Impact Stories

GitHub Repository

Starring as a means of recommendation

Forking analogous to citing

Direct measure ofsoftware citation?

Requires user IDs, repository IDs, APIs

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We must describe and cite software otherwise we cannot benefit from and reward reuse and refinement

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SSI at EGI CF13

• Community Engagement (Lead: Shoaib Sufi) Wed 10th, 16:00 Engaging the software in research

community Thu 11th, 14:00 Champions workshop: SSI Fellows

• Consultancy (Lead: Steve Crouch) All Week Ask Steve / Mike at the SSI booth

• Policy and Publicity (Lead: Simon Hettrick) Wed 10th, 16:20 Building sustainable software for science: why

good code is only the beginning• Training (Lead: Mike Jackson)

Thu 11th, all-day Software Carpentry Taster Sessions• doi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.678226• Collaboration between universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford and Southampton.

Supported by EPSRC Grant EP/H043160/1.