Archives des mots-clés : Software

How Long Can We Build It? Ensuring Usability of a Scientific Code Base

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Authors : Klaus Rechert, Jurek Oberhauser, Rafael Gieschke

Software and in particular source code became an important component of scientific publications and henceforth is now subject of research data management. Maintaining source code such that it remains a usable and a valuable scientific contribution is and remains a huge task.

Not all code contributions can be actively maintained forever. Eventually, there will be a significant backlog of legacy source-code. In this article we analyse the requirements for applying the concept of long-term reusability to source code.

We use simple case study to identify gaps and provide a technical infrastructure based on emulator to support automated builds of historic software in form of source code.

URL : How Long Can We Build It? Ensuring Usability of a Scientific Code Base

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v16i1.770

Science-Software Linkage: The Challenges of Traceability between Scientific Knowledge and Software Artifacts

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Authors : Hideaki Hata, Jin L.C. Guo, Raula Gaikovina Kula, Christoph Treude

Although computer science papers are often accompanied by software artifacts, connecting research papers to their software artifacts and vice versa is not always trivial. First of all, there is a lack of well-accepted standards for how such links should be provided.

Furthermore, the provided links, if any, often become outdated: they are affected by link rot when pre-prints are removed, when repositories are migrated, or when papers and repositories evolve independently.

In this paper, we summarize the state of the practice of linking research papers and associated source code, highlighting the recent efforts towards creating and maintaining such links.

We also report on the results of several empirical studies focusing on the relationship between scientific papers and associated software artifacts, and we outline challenges related to traceability and opportunities for overcoming these challenges.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.05891

Software must be recognised as an important output of scholarly research

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Authors : Caroline Jay, Robert Haines, Daniel S. Katz

Software now lies at the heart of scholarly research. Here we argue that as well as being important from a methodological perspective, software should, in many instances, be recognised as an output of research, equivalent to an academic paper.

The article discusses the different roles that software may play in research and highlights the relationship between software and research sustainability and reproducibility. It describes the challenges associated with the processes of citing and reviewing software, which differ from those used for papers.

We conclude that whilst software outputs do not necessarily fit comfortably within the current publication model, there is a great deal of positive work underway that is likely to make an impact in addressing this.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07571

Toward a Critical Approach for OER: A Case Study in Removing the ‘Big Five’ from OER Creation

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Authors : Kris Joseph, Julia Guy, Michael B McNally

This paper examines the role of proprietary software in the production of open educational resources (OER). Using a single case study, the paper explores the implications of removing proprietary software from an OER project, with the aim of examining how complicated such a process is and whether removing such software meaningfully advances a critical approach to OER.

The analysis reveals that software from the Big Five technology companies (Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft) are deeply embedded in OER production and distribution, and that complete elimination of software or services from these companies is not feasible.

The paper concludes by positing that simply rejecting Big Five technology introduces too many challenges to be justified on a pragmatic basis; however, it encourages OER creators to remain critical in their use of technology and continue to try to advance a critical approach to OER.

URL : Toward a Critical Approach for OER: A Case Study in Removing the ‘Big Five’ from OER Creation

Alternative location : https://openpraxis.org/index.php/OpenPraxis/article/view/1020

Identifiers for Digital Objects: the Case of Software Source Code Preservation

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Authors : Roberto Di Cosmo, Morane Gruenpeter, Stefano Zacchiroli

In the very broad scope addressed by digital preservation initiatives, a special place belongs to the scientific and technical artifacts that we need to properly archive to enable scientific reproducibility.

For these artifacts we need identifiers that are not only unique and persistent, but also support integrity in an intrinsic way. They must provide strong guarantees that the object denoted by a given identifier will always be the same, without relying on third parties and external administrative processes.

In this article, we report on our quest for this identifiers for digital objects (IDOs), whose properties are different from, and complementary to, those of the various digital identifiers of objects (DIOs) that are in widespread use today.

We argue that both kinds of identifiers are needed and present the framework for intrinsic persistent identifiers that we have adopted in Software Heritage for preserving billions of software artifacts.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01865790

Intellectual Property in Publishing and …

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Intellectual Property in Publishing and Research: Open Access in Biotechnology, Life Sciences, and Software :

“We show some of the parallels between three sectors: (i) research, in particular research and scholarly publishing; (ii) software, and the diversity of its rights management ecosystem; and (iii) biotechnology, with its restricted intellectual property ecosystem and declining levels of innovation. A core aspect of the research process is to be found in scholarly publishing. Some of the most advanced forms of scholarly, research publishing, relating to publishing practices including citation, are evident in biotechnology and the life sciences. Motivation for Open Access, for example, is far and away the
most pronounced in the life sciences. We look at how this ties in with the evolution of the management, generally, of intellectual property. Computing, with its basis in computational reasoning, can and should play a central role in this evolution. In fact we can already discern a future view of pharmaceuticals as a new form of software.”

URL : http://www.cepis.org/media/upenet.IV.20101.pdf