The Recommendations for Research Software Sustainability in the Netherlands addresses the topics of software archiving (the storage of source code) and also software sustainability, which also covers the aspects of being able to run software to reproduce results, and the reuse of software in new contexts to produce new results (Reproducibility & Replicability). The results are addressed towards various stakeholders in the science system. In recent months, Gerard Coen (Project lead Software Sustainability at DANS) has been part of an LCRDM Task Group collaborating to produce the work.
It has been produced in the true spirit of Open Science as a cooperation between researchers, research funders, publishers, research institutions and infrastructures. A key takeaway is that national organizations in the digital research infrastructure (The Netherlands eScience Center, DANS, & SURF) should take on a more active and visible role in supporting research institutions in their ambitions to develop relevant and high-quality support capacity within research groups and in digital competence centers.
The Netherlands eScience Center, SURF and DANS are already discussing closer cooperation of their services and activities, aiming to offer researchers more seamless experiences in archiving, finding and reusing data and software. DANS has a long tradition in advocating for recognition of the importance of research software and working on the topic of software sustainability. We collaborate closely with our partners at home (NLeSC, SURF) and abroad (SSI, SwH) to develop guidance and solutions. DANS has been a proud sponsor of Software Heritage (SwH) since its inception.
The recommendations which touch on points related to both ‘FAIR for software’ and the broader topic of software sustainability are now available on the LCRDM website.
More information
Questions related to Software Sustainability at DANS can be directed to Gerard Coen. An overview of our recent work in this area is available here.
