Simon Hettrick
Professor Simon Hettrick is Deputy Director of the Software Sustainability Institute, and a Director of the Southampton Research Software Group.
Simon Hettrick
Software Sustainability Institute
4 September - RSE Conference 2018, Birmingham
ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195 @sjh5000
CC BY 4.0
Software Sustainability Institute
Cultivating better, more sustainable, research software to enable world-class research
www.rsg.soton.ac.uk
@RSGSoton
Working hypothesis
These slides: https://goo.gl/XQiFEP
RSEs = good
31 repositories
~600,000 papers
https://github.com/softwaresaved/Eprints-searching-for-software
65%
2017
2/3rds
of papers indicate software reliance in 2017
~70% of research relies on software
[1]
UK RSE Association
[2]
UK RSE Groups
2/3rds
demand significantly outstrips supply
1/3rds
demand outstrips supply
Demand for RSE services
A bit of a problem...
210,000
UK researchers
~150,000
researchers need help
115
researchers per RSE
What do RSEs do?
These slides: https://goo.gl/XQiFEP
-
A few big, year+ projects
-
Many small months-long projects
-
Training and teaching
-
Questions and "charity work"
Research
Software
Engineering
Researcher
Software
Engineer
Researcher
developer
RSE
Wouldn't it be better if we could get researchers to help each other
Research Software Community
What did we do?
These slides: https://goo.gl/XQiFEP
Communication across a university is difficult
Discipline
What do you want?
Support network
Peer-review of code
Interest groups
Better communications
[3]
What do we know about the community
These slides: https://goo.gl/XQiFEP
Tech level
Languages
Source of problems
Interest groups
It's not just Southampton
These slides: https://goo.gl/XQiFEP
[2]
UK RSE Groups
Research communities also benefit RSGs
What would help you setting up a community?
These slides: https://goo.gl/XQiFEP
Questions
These slides: https://goo.gl/XQiFEP
References
- https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2014-12-04-its-impossible-conduct-research-without-software-say-7-out-10-uk-researchers
- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JCXzH9YDe16TbodwwSr7ywvz8tAC4t2D&usp=sharing
- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r9DlMbTMuVfoAxnqpRr14dek49_7CFQr47LWNJg98sY
- https://github.com/softwaresaved/international-survey/blob/master/analysis/results_uk_2017_narrative.ipynb
There Are Not Enough RSEs in the World
By Simon Hettrick
There Are Not Enough RSEs in the World
There are 210,000 researchers in the UK and a significant number (at least a third) rely on software to conduct their research. How do we support this huge community with only a few thousand RSEs in the UK? One option is to invest effort into creating local communities that complement the work of RSEs by dealing with the straightforward questions asked by researchers.
