Addressing Research Software Sustainability via Institutes
This addresses the sustainability problem for researchers and institutions reliant on research software, but it is incremental as it builds on existing institute models.
The paper examines the role of software sustainability institutes in tackling the ongoing human effort required to maintain research software, highlighting their development of best practices to reduce effort and foster appreciation. It discusses examples like the UK SSI and planned institutes in the US and Australia, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.
Research software is essential to modern research, but it requires ongoing human effort to sustain: to continually adapt to changes in dependencies, to fix bugs, and to add new features. Software sustainability institutes, amongst others, develop, maintain, and disseminate best practices for research software sustainability, and build community around them. These practices can both reduce the amount of effort that is needed and create an environment where the effort is appreciated and rewarded. The UK SSI is such an institute, and the US URSSI and the Australian AuSSI are planning to become institutes, and this extended abstract discusses them and the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.