Research software engineering

Research software engineering is the use of software engineering practices in research applications. The term was proposed in a research paper in 2010 in response to an empirical survey on tools used for software development in research projects[1]. It started to be used in United Kingdom in 2012[2][3], when it was needed to define the type of software development needed in research. This focuses on reproducibility, reusability, and accuracy of data analysis and applications created for research.

Support

Various type of associations and organisations have been created around this role to support the creation of posts in universities and research institutes. In 2014 a Research Software Engineer Association was created in UK[4], with attracted 160 members in the first three months. Other countries like the Netherlands, Germany, and the USA followed creating similar communities and there are similar efforts being pursued in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and Belgium.

UK counts with more than 20 universities and institutes[5] with groups that provide access to software expertise to different areas of research. Additionally, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council created a Research Software Engineer fellowship to promote this role and help the creation of RSE groups across UK. The fellowship calls run in 2015 and 2017

The world first RSE conference took place in UK in September 2016,[4] it was repeated in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and is planned again for 2020. In 2019 the first national RSE conferences in Germany[6] and the Netherlands[7] were held, next editions are planned for 2020.

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References
  1. C.R. Prause, R. Reiners, S. Dencheva. Empirical Study of Tool Support in Highly Distributed Research Projects. 5th International Conference on Global Software Engineer (ICGSE), Princeton, NJ, USA, pp. 23–32. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICGSE.2010.13
  2. "The Research Software Engineer — Digital Research 2012". digital-research-2012.oerc.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 2018-02-01.
  3. Hettrick, Simon. "A not-so-brief history of Research Software Engineers". Software Sustainability Institute. Retrieved 31 January 2018.
  4. Alys, Brett; Michael, Croucher; Robert, Haines; Simon, Hettrick; James, Hetherington; Mark, Stillwell; Claire, Wyatt (2017-04-06). "Research Software Engineers: State of the Nation Report 2017". Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.495360.
  5. "Research Software Groups – Research Software Engineers Association". Research Software Engineers Association. Retrieved 2018-02-01.
  6. "deRSE19 - Conference for Research Software Engineers in Germany". de-RSE e.V. - Gesellschaft für Forschungssoftware. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
  7. "NL-RSE19". NL-RSE. Retrieved 2019-12-06.
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