High level overview of how Australian Research Data Commons is viewing Research Software as a First Class Object - Tom Honeyman on Twitter

This resource first appeared in issue #53 on 04 Dec 2020 and has tags Technical Leadership: Software Development, Working With A Research Community: Credit

High level overview of how Australian Research Data Commons is viewing Research Software as a First Class Object - Tom Honeyman on Twitter

This is a really interesting diagram of how ARDC is thinking of research software:

Here's a preview of what we're thinking (high level) for a national agenda for #researchsoftware as a first class object @ARDC_AU. Feedback welcome pic.twitter.com/XtfwhK48DN

— Tom Honeyman (@TomHoneyman3) November 30, 2020

The approach is I think the right one, and one I’ve advocated before; taking a path-to-maturity model approach, where the levels are (in their terms, with my interpretations):

• Reveal: supporting methods development - making sure the code that goes with a paper gets on github (or wherever), is documented and useable, etc. The “Long tail” of research software development
• Transform: Turning that initial code into something that can be run by others
• Sustain: Turning that code into research infrastructure itself - keeping it maintained, widely useable.

I think of this as “proof of concept; prototype; production”. They’re very different stages. More controversially, I think of only the first, proof of concept, as actually being a research output; prototype and production are about turning that research output into a research input.