Research Software Development & Management in Universities: Case Studies from Manchester's RSDS Group, Illinois' NCSA, and Notre Dame's CRC
This provides insights for universities and software engineering researchers on improving research software management, but it is incremental as it compares existing models without introducing new methods.
The paper examined three university models for organizing staff in research software development, analyzing their impact on software engineering practices and processes to inform universities and researchers.
Modern research in the sciences, engineering, humanities, and other fields depends on software, and specifically, research software. Much of this research software is developed in universities, by faculty, postdocs, students, and staff. In this paper, we focus on the role of university staff. We examine three different, independently-developed models under which these staff are organized and perform their work, and comparatively analyze these models and their consequences on the staff and on the software, considering how the different models support software engineering practices and processes. This information can be used by software engineering researchers to understand the practices of such organizations and by universities who want to set up similar organizations and to better produce and maintain research software.