FAIR4RS and Software Management Plans

TU Delft - Digital Competence Centre

These slides were made with Marp.

Topics

• What is FAIR for research software?
• What is a Software Management Plan?
• Why and when is it useful?
• How do I get started?

An all too common problem...

Remember, your past self can also be the previous developer...

Definition of Research software

Research Software includes source code files, algorithms, scripts, computational
workflows and executables that were created during the research process
or for a research purpose.

Software components (e.g., operating systems, libraries, dependencies, packages, scripts, etc.) that are used for research but were not created during or with a clear research intent should be considered software in research and not Research Software.

A scary anekdote

• A group of researchers obtain great results and submit their work to a high-profile journal.
• Reviewers ask for new figures and additional analysis.
• The researchers start working on revisions and generate modified figures, but find inconsistencies with old figures.
• The researchers can’t find some of the data they used to generate the original results, and can’t figure out which parameters they used when running their analyses.
• The manuscript is still collecting dust in a drawer …

FAIR for Research Software

Findable

Accessible

Interoperable

Reusable

All quite recent developments:
14 October 2022 - Introducing the FAIR principles for research software

FAIR does not ensure reproducibility

reproducibility refers to the ability of a researcher to duplicate the results of a prior study using the same materials as were used by the original investigator. That is, a second researcher might use the same raw data to build the same analysis files and implement the same statistical analysis in an attempt to yield the same results. Reproducibility is a minimum necessary condition for a finding to be believable and informative.
U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) subcommittee on replicability in science

Advantages of FAIR software

1. Track a complete history of your research (version control really is a must)
2. Facilitate collaboration and review process (blog Anton Akhmerov)
3. Publish validated research and avoid misinformation
4. Write your papers, thesis and reports efficiently
5. Get credits for your work fairly
6. Ensure continuity of your work

Software Management Plans

A Software Management Plan (SMP) is a document that describes how a specific software project is developed, maintained, and curated. The goal of an SMP is to ensure that the software is usable and maintainable in the long term.

Recently, the a joint initiative of the Netherlands eScience Center and the Dutch Research Council (NOW) published a Practical Guide to Software Management Plans

Why and when are SMP's useful?

An SMP makes explicit what research software does, who it is for, what the outputs are, who is responsible for the release and ensures that the software stays available to the community (and for how long). It can help to:

• Explain why developing new software is necessary
• Make the research software reusable and sustainable
• Plan for necessary resources
• Allow for evaluation of work that went into software implementation (funders, community)

Ideally, an SMP should be drafted at the beginning of a research project, but can be equally valuable for existing projects.

Core components of an SMP

Purpose
What is the current reason or expected end-use for developing
the software?

Reliability
The effect of software failure and/or non-maintenance on risk of harm, reputation, research.

Maintenance
The long-term effort needed to maintain the software as long as it might be used as a standalone tool or dependency.

Example for medium management level

Purpose
Software is part of a research project or the primary research output. May be (re)used by others.

Reliability
Direct influence on researchers, good practices such as version control (Git) and user/technical documentation is essential.

Maintenance
This software’s functionality is useful to researchers both in and outside the project, making it suitable for distribution. It can have a lifespan longer than the project in which it was developed and therefore long-term sustainability becomes more important.

SMP's and FAIR4RS

SMP
high level project overview with focus on management and maintencance

FAIR principles
translate requirements to practical implementation

How do I get started?

Go through the assignments

Don’t worry if you can’t answer all the questions, you can iterate over this draft as we move along through program.