Online FAIR Software Route launched
At a dedicated session of the 2019 eScience Symposium, Hans de Jonge, Open Science advisor of the Dutch Research Council NWO, cut the virtual ribbon of the new website about making research software Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). This online guide is an initiative of the Netherlands eScience Center and Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), specialists in the field of software and data and part of the Dutch national research e-infrastructure.
Five recommended steps
In most data-driven research, software and code are equally important research outputs as data are. In order to make software FAIR, just as data, specific choices are needed when selecting a repository, adding a license or registering codes. To serve the Dutch research community with a clear and univocal advice on these steps and decisions needed, the FAIR Software Route provides 5 recommended steps to turn software and code FAIR. Although this initiative is started as a two-party cooperation, other organizations and institutes, from the Netherlands and abroad, can officially endorse this initiative and turn it into a truly community effort.
100 software packages available
Another result of the cooperation of DANS and the eScience Center is the addition earlier this year of scientific software in NARCIS, the Dutch portal to scholarly research information. To promote the findability of research software, the eScience Center developed a content management system for software named the Research Software Directory, allowing researchers to publish their software in an online portfolio. All information from the Research Software Directory in use by the eScience Center is also available via NARCIS. There are now more than 100 software packages online in NARCIS.
More information
Please visit the website of the FAIR Software Route or contact Cees Hof from DANS or Jason Maassen from the eScience Center. Please also read the blog on the Research Software Directory and the connection with NARCIS and the news item of DANS on the same subject.
