Software is increasingly important for researchers, with both research staff and students finding themselves needing to write and develop their own software to produce data (e.g. through simulations) or analyse their results. There is a need to understand how to manage software used in research, including its curation, citation and how to store and share it openly for dissemination. What is often overlooked is what kind of licence we need in order to make sure the software created is credited / cited to the researcher? Commercialisation of the software also needs to be considered – is the MIT License, one of the most commonly used and permissive open source licenses, the best to use?

Session Plan

We will ask Andrei Nicusan, a PhD student in Engineering to pose the question that he has been pondering, how can you balance the rights of the author with the rights of open source? Does pushing everything to open source negate the intellectual property of the work a researcher creates?

We have a group of academics from the Law School, Library Services and our own Software Engineers who will try and answer the question.

Presenters

Andrei Nicusan - PhD student in Engineering

Mariela de Amstalden (Birmingham Law School)

Alex Fenlon (Library Services - Collection Management and Development)

James Carpenter (Advanced Research Computing) - Research Software Engineer

Warrick Ball (Advanced Research Computing) - Research Software Engineer

What to expect

Digital Research Conversations (DRCs) feature a number of short talks from researchers or colleagues who support research, with time for discussion. Lunch will be provided and after the talks we will have a Q & A session, where you can put your software-related queries to the panel (which will include one of our Research Software Engineers). See our blog posts for information on past DRCs.

How to take part

We need you to register if you would like to attend the event, as we are limited on space (and food!). All UoB researchers welcome, both research staff and research students, and staff who support research. We will provide vegetarian options but please let us know if you have any other dietary requirements.

We will be investigating the possibility of live-streaming the event - if you are only able to attend online then please contact us (bearinfo@contacts.bham.ac.uk) rather than registering.

Registrations are closed

Digital Research Conversations - Love your Code/Software