The growth and professionalisation of Research Software Engineering
By Simon Hettrick
1 April 2020 - CW20 @sjh5000 ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195
Software is everywhere
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2014 Software Survey
15 Russell Group Universities
500 researchers from all disciplines
92%
Use software
69%
Software is fundamental
210,000
UK researchers
Percentage of cross-council funding in software-reliant research
Software in publications
65%
31 UK institutions ~ 600k papers
Who's writing
the software?
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No career for software developers
Online courses and books
Attended a course
No training
29%
46%
50%
25%
0%
25%
"Professional"
"Beginner"
(n=197)
(n=198)
What's wrong with self taught?
Van Gough
Hettrick
POA
$39,921,750
Research
Software
Engineering
Researcher
Software
Engineer
Researcher
developer
Research
Software
Engineer
Building a community
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1428
members
March 2019
UK RSE Association
RSE Conference
https://rsecon2020.society-rse.org
Australia/New Zealand: @rse_aunz
Germany: @RSE_de
Netherlands: @nl_rse
Nordic: @nordic_rse
UK: @ResearchSoftEng
USA: us-rse.org
Professionalisation
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RSE Groups at
28 organisations
bit.ly/RSEGroupsUK
http://bit.ly/UKRIRoadmap2019
p.114-126
Vital, but hidden
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191,000
outputs submitted
185,000
outputs in publication categories
38
outputs in software category
The way in which the REF exercise is conducted overlooks many of the people who are vital to the success of research.
http://hidden-ref.org
@hiddenREF
Thank you!
@sjh5000
ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195
Licence
© Simon Hettrick
These slides are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
These slides: https://bit.ly/2USMyAr
Studies and links
- Software survey:
https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2017-09-06-journey-reproducibility-excel-pandas - Grants data analysis:
https://github.com/softwaresaved/software_in_grants_GTR - Publication analysis coming soon
- Southampton Software Survey: https://github.com/Southampton-RSG/soton_software_survey_analysis_2019
- Top ten reasons to be an RSE: https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2013-08-23-ten-reasons-be-research-software-engineer
Picture credits
Where not stated on image:
Big data - Tumisu ,Blockchain - mmi19, Cloud computing - Pete Linforth, Cybersecurity - Darwin Laganzon, DNA - Gerd Altman, IBM PC - Ruben de Rijcke, IOT - jeferrb, Machine Learning - Gordon Johnson, Oxford academics - public domain, Pills in hand - Tom Bullock, Goliath cartoon - Cartoonstock, RSE Conference 2016 photo - Society of Research Software Engineering, UK map - Map data ©2018 Google, Society of RSE logo - Society of RSE