Establishing a national research software award

Software development has become an integral part of the scholarly ecosystem, spanning all fields and disciplines. To support the sharing and creation of knowledge in line with open science principles, and particularly to enable the reproducibility of research results, it is crucial to make the source code of research software available, allowing for modification, reuse, and distribution.

Recognizing the significance of open-source software contributions in academia, the second French Plan for Open Science, announced by the Minister of Higher Education and Research in 2021, introduced a National Award to promote open-source research software. This award serves multiple objectives: firstly, to highlight the software projects and teams that have devoted time and effort to develop outstanding research software, sometimes for decades, and often with little recognition; secondly, to draw attention to the importance of software as a valuable research output and to inspire new generations of researchers to follow and learn from these examples.

We present here an in-depth analysis of the design and implementation of this unique initiative. As a national award established explicitly to foster Open Science practices by the French Minister of Research, it faced the intricate challenge of fairly evaluating open research software across all fields, striving for inclusivity across domains, applications, and participants. We provide a comprehensive report on the results of the first edition, which received 129 high-quality submissions. Additionally, we emphasize the impact of this initiative on the open science landscape, promoting software as a valuable research outcome, on par with publications.

Software is crucial for modern research. For the goals of open science, reproducibility, and wider reuse, sharing software source code and acknowledging software development are essential. In France, in 2021, the Minister of Higher Education and Research introduced the National Plan for Open Science.

The plan highlights the role of open-source software in academia and aims to give software the same recognition as publications and data. A part of the plan is the introduction of a National Award to recognize open-source research software contributions. This award acknowledges software projects and their teams, which have often worked without much recognition. It also emphasizes the importance of software as a research output, hoping to inspire future researchers.

This article examines the award's design and implementation. It addresses the challenges of assessing open research software from different research fields. In the first edition of the award, there were 129 high-quality submissions, indicating the award's potential to shift perspectives on software's role in open science, aligning it with the importance of academic publications. Through a detailed account of our experiences and the insights gained, we aim to provide a reference for other countries or institutions considering to establish similar recognitions.