Enabling Open Science Through Research Code - Episode 5: Testing Research Code

This resource sheet was created for Episode 5 of a six-part meetup series focusing on Enabling Open Science through Research Code. The series kicked off on International Research Software Engineering Day.

Episode 5 focused on Testing Research Code.

Questions that were addressed in the session include:

• What is software testing?
• How can software testing improve research reproducibility and collaboration?
• What are the most useful types of tests for research code? (e.g., unit tests, integration tests, regression tests, property-based tests)
• How can researchers balance the trade-off between writing tests and meeting research deadlines?
• What are some lightweight testing strategies that researchers with minimal programming experience can use?
• How can version control (e.g., Git) and continuous integration (CI) help automate testing in research projects?
• If someone has never written a test before, what is the simplest way to start?
• What tools and frameworks would you recommend for testing in common research languages (Python, R, MATLAB, etc.)?
• And more!

Our speakers:

• Sheena O'Connell (Founder, Trainer & Software Developer at @Prelude, South Africa)
• Saranjeet Kaur (Research Software Engineer at Imperial College London)
• Abhishek Dasgupta (Senior Research Software Engineer at the University of Oxford Software Engineering Group)

The event was hosted as a collaboration between Talarify, RSSE Africa, RSE Asia, the African Reproducibility Network, and the Research Software Alliance. 

More information is available on the RSSE Africa website.