Charting the Course: Policy Pathways for Sustainable Research Software

About the project
Funded by the Sloan Foundation, "Charting the Course: Policy and Planning for Sustainable Research Software" is a project aimed at reshaping the future of research software within the scholarly community through evidence-informed policy work. This initiative gathers and analyzes data about existing practices and policies, then communicates this crucial information to stakeholders. Building on established planning by URSSI, the project strives to understand why research software policy changes succeed or fail, and leverages these insights to devise and refine future policy strategies for enhanced software sustainability and impact. 

This policy work focuses on grasping and altering the sociotechnical landscape of research software to foster beneficial outcomes like software sustainability and improved research, rather than targeting changes at the individual or project level.

The project's work is being carried out in an open and transparent manner, with the aim of encouraging wider community engagement. All outcomes will be openly shared, supporting the on-going development of the sustainable software community.

About the project team     

Principal Investigator - Prof. Daniel S. Katz 

Professor Daniel S. Katz is Chief Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Research Associate Professor in Computer Science (CS), Research Associate Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Research Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences (iSchool), and Faculty Affiliate in Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is also a Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Fellow. He was previously a Senior Fellow in the Computation Institute (CI) at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory (2009-2016) and Guest Faculty at Argonne (2016-2021), a Program Director in the Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation (2012-2016), Director for Cyberinfrastructure Development at the Center for Computation & Technology (CCT), Louisiana State University (LSU) (2006-2009), and Adjunct Associate Professor in the LSU Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (2006-2013), Open Grid Forum Area Co-director for Applications (2010-2012), and TeraGrid GIG Director of Science (2008-2011). From 1996 to 2006, he was at JPL in a variety of roles, including: Principal Member of the Information Systems and Computer Science Staff, Supervisor of the Parallel Applications Technologies group, Area Program Manager of High End Computing in the Space Mission Information Technology Office, Applications Project Element Manager for the Remote Exploration and Experimentation (REE) Project, and Team Leader for MOD Tool (a tool for the integrated design of microwave and millimeter-wave instruments). From 1993 to 1996, he was employed by Cray Research (and later by Silicon Graphics) as a Computational Scientist on-site at JPL and Caltech, specializing in parallel implementation of computational electromagnetic algorithms.

Dan's interest is in the development and use of advanced cyberinfrastructure to solve challenging problems at multiple scales. His technical research interests are in applications, algorithms, fault tolerance, and programming in parallel and distributed computing, including HPC, Grid, Cloud, etc. He is also interested in policy issues, including citation and credit mechanisms and practices associated with software and data, organization and community practices for collaboration, and career paths for computing researchers. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, in 1988, 1990, and 1994, respectively. His work is documented in numerous book chapters, journal and conference publications, and NASA Tech Briefs. He is a senior member of the IEEE and ACM, co-founder and current Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Open Source Software, co-founder of the US Research Software Engineer Association (US-RSE), and co-founder and steering committee chair of the Research Software Alliance (ReSA).

Project Researcher - Dr. Eric A. Jensen

Prof. Eric A. Jensen is a senior researcher at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), where he previously conducted audience research on cinematic scientific visualization as a Civic Science Fellow at the Advanced Visualization Lab. Jensen has served as an impact evaluation consultant and trainer for government and research organizations such as UNESCO, the UK, Irish and German governments, University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. He has 20+ years of professional experience in social research, evaluation and practice. His PhD in sociology is from the University of Cambridge.

Jensen is the author of 120+ publications, including papers in journals such as Nature, Science, PLOS ONE and Public Understanding of Science. He has also led development and publication of official reports, including numerous influential policy reports for government and non-profit organisations such as UNESCO, Science Foundation Ireland, the European Space Agency, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Department for Environment, Food, & Rural Affairs, Arts Council England, the Australian Research Data Commons and the European Commission. His recent books include Doing Real Research: A Practical Guide to Social Research (SAGE) and Science Communication: An introduction. 

Since 2007, Jensen has led 80+ research, evaluation or impact projects or work packages, worth about $7.3 million to his institutions (total value of these projects is around $37.3 million). These projects have had a wide range of funders, including the National Science Foundation (USA), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (USA), The Brinson Foundation (USA), European Commission (EU), UK Research and Innovation (Arts & Humanities Research Council; Economic and Social Research Council), National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (UK), UK government departments (inc. Defra; DCMS), the Nuffield Foundation (UK-based), Sciencewise, Arts Council England, National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement, Disney Conservation Fund, Science Foundation Ireland, the German government (BMBF – education ministry), Brazilian government (federal and states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) and UNESCO, among others. 

Jensen has contributed to improving science systems on a global level through his work with UNESCO, which has included the following:

• Author of the global report for the first formal monitoring point for the UNESCO Recommendation on Science & Scientific Researchers, analyzing and synthesizing national reports submitted from all over the world and preparing a report with recommendations for the UNESCO Executive Board. (Invited to join UNESCO temporarily for this assignment based on recognized expertise on the topic of socially responsible research systems).
• Developed a detailed methodological framework for the UNESCO Recommendation on Science & Scientific Researchers formal monitoring process, as well as piloting the new process in six African UNESCO Member States. (Consultancy project conducted in 2022)
• Lead author of the national reports on the state of science submitted to UNESCO for the quadrennial monitoring of the Recommendation on Science & Scientific Researchers for South Africa, Lithuania and Serbia.
• Invited expert trainer for Arab UNESCO Member States on monitoring and evaluation of science systems.
• Designed and published indicators framework for the UNESCO Recommendation on Science & Scientific Researchers in collaboration with UNESCO permanent staff.

Jensen has also served as an invited trainer for numerous research and innovation institutions and governments around the world on topics relating to science communication, evaluation and evidence-based practice (Trained >15000 researchers, policymakers, and other professionals from >1000 institutions in > 75 countries, including on the ground in 30+ countries, delivered in English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese).