Understanding software

(and staying out of trouble)

By Simon Hettrick

 31 January 2020 - N8 RSE Group Leaders meeting   @sjh5000  ORCID: 0000-0002-6809-5195

Fantasy-led

policy making

 These slides: http://bit.ly/2U8CxAy

http://bit.ly/UKRIRoadmap2019

 

p.114-126

"How much research relies on software"

Use

software

Fundamental to

results

Develop own code

69%

92%

56%

Why we're not doing it again

 These slides: http://bit.ly/2U8CxAy

Plan

  1. Select 15 Russell Group universities

  2. Identify website structure for their faculties/colleges/schools

  3. Write scraper

  4. Collect all emails addresses

  5. Select 1000 email addresses from each university

  6. Send 15,000 emails

  7. Profit!

15,000 emails

500 responses

5 complaints

It was all worth it

The new survey

 These slides: http://bit.ly/2U8CxAy

210,000

academic staff
 

150,000

of whom conduct research

 

384

survey responses needed

(confidence level of 95% with margin of error of 5%)

3000

research staff
 

3000

research postgraduates

The survey answers

  1. Who uses software

  2. Who relies on software

  3. Who develops software

  4. Who needs software training

  5. Who brings in funding for software development

 

28

RSE Groups
 

88,000

research staff

The offer

 These slides: http://bit.ly/2U8CxAy

You get:

 

 

 

 

 

If you:

  • CC-By your anonymised data and store it openly
  • Promise not to adapt the current questions
  • Survey
  • Analysis code
  • Ethics paperwork
  • Email text
  • Report template

Interested?

 

Email me:

sjh@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Southampton

 These slides: http://bit.ly/2U8CxAy

"Vital"

"Not important"

"Professional"

"Beginner"

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: http://bit.ly/2U8CxAy

Studies

  • National software survey:
    https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2017-09-06-journey-reproducibility-excel-pandas

  • Southampton software survey:
    https://github.com/Southampton-RSG/soton_software_survey_analysis_2019/blob/master/report/Research%20software%20at%20the%20University%20of%20Southampton.pdf

 

Links

  1. UKRI roadmap: http://bit.ly/UKRIRoadmap2019

  2. Southampton results: https://github.com/Southampton-RSG/soton_software_survey_analysis_2019

Understanding software (and staying out of trouble)

By Simon Hettrick

Understanding software (and staying out of trouble)

Presented at the N8 RSE Leader and Aspiring Leaders Meeting, University of Leeds.

  • 1,242

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