ROOT — Technology That Stands the Test of Time

ROOT — Technology That Stands the Test of Time was written as a contribution to the roundtable “Resilient research infrastructures – smaller, simplier, freer, better?”, held on 11 September 2026 at the EASST 2026 conference in Kraków, Poland. The roundtable explored how research practices and digital infrastructures can become more resilient, accessible, and sustainable.

  Drawing on personal experiences with LaTeX, scholarly publishing, and research data management, Lukas C. Bossert reflects on the difficulties that technically polished work can create for collaboration and later reuse. These experiences introduce ROOT—Robust, Open, Ongoing, and Time-tested—as a way of choosing digital technologies that remain useful over time.

  Using building bricks as a metaphor, the text connects robustness with repairability, openness with documented formats and interfaces, ongoing development with active maintenance and community support, and longevity with a demonstrated ability to adapt. Examples including Emacs, Org mode, gnuplot, awk, Perl, and literate programming illustrate the continuing value of established tools. The central argument is that sustainable research depends on technologies and working practices that allow colleagues, future users, and our future selves to understand, reuse, and continue the work.