The British Library, The Software Sustainability Institute and The Alan Turing Institute are co-organising a workshop on Software Citation to raise the profile of the topic, provide information and address current challenges.

Software of some form is now essential to almost all research. Alongside commercial packages, many researchers and research software engineers spend significant time creating and contributing to software, a resource which is currently under-represented in the scholarly record. This creates three key problems.

Firstly, trust in research, particularly scientific research, is reliant on the peer review system but without ready access to the software used to perform a given analysis it is difficult for readers to truly check an article’s validity. Secondly, lack of access to the software underlying research makes it significantly more difficult to build new methods on top of existing ones: it becomes harder and harder to “stand on the shoulders of giants”. Finally, promotion and hiring in academic research is heavily dependent on building a portfolio of well-cited papers, and researchers whose main work is software development often have fewer papers of their own and are named co-authors on fewer than their colleagues.

One way of addressing these issues is by enabling and normalising citation of software. Software citation brings the effort of software development within current model of academic credit, while simultaneously enhancing the scholarly record by linking together software with publications, datasets, methods and other research objects.

This workshop is split over two days; each day is mostly independent and aimed at different audiences. Please note that there is no "all inclusive ticket type" - make sure you book tickets for each part of the workshop you are interested in.

Day 1

The first day is an afternoon workshop giving a general overview of the purpose and benefits of software citation in the context of academic research. This workshop is aimed at researchers and RSEs, and anyone interested in learning more about software citation. After attending, participants will understand the importance of research software in the scholarly communications ecosystem, and of citing software, and be able to correctly cite the software they use in their own work.

Evening event

On the evening of Day 1, the Alan Turing Institute will host a reception followed by a public lecture given by Dr. James Hetherington, Director of Research Engineering, titled Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom: perspectives on social credit systems for software scholars.

Day 2

The second part of the event is a full-day workshop focusing on gaining a shared understanding of current barriers to effective use of software citation and starting to develop practical solutions. This part will be aimed at those with responsibility for developing policy, infrastructure, training and guidance in this area, including Research Software Engineers, IT staff, librarians and archivists.

Working collaboratively, the participants will explore the current technical and cultural challenges preventing software citation from becoming a part of mainstream research culture, and identify potential solutions and the stakeholders who may be able to realise them. Based on these discussions, a report for the sector will be produced giving recommendations.

Agenda

Day 1 - Workshop (Venue: Bronte Room, British Library Knowledge Centre)

13:00 Registration
13:30 Welcome and introductions (Jez Cope, British Library)
13:40 Keynote Talk - Reproducible research is impossible without software, so why don’t we reward it? (Kirstie Whitaker, The Alan Turing Institute / University of Cambridge)
14:15 Keynote Talk - Metadata driven data management and computation with DDI-Lifecycle (Jon Johnson, UCL / CLOSER Network)
14:50 Break
15:10 Talk - How to cite software: current best practice (Neil Chue Hong, Software Sustainability Institute)
15:30 Interactive Panel Session: Bridging the gap between theory and practice (Chair: Neil Chue Hong, Kirstie Whitaker, Jon Johnson, Frances Madden)
16:30 Close of Workshop Day 1 - Move to the Turing

Day 1 - Evening Event (Venue: Enigma Room, The Alan Turing Institute)

16:45 Reception
18:00 Keynote: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom: perspectives on social credit systems for software scholars (James Hetherington, The Alan Turing Institute) and Q&A (Chair: Giovanni Colavizza)
19:00 Close of Evening Event

Day 2 - Workshop (Venue: Boardroom, British Library - note: additional access requirements below)

10.30 Registration

11.00 Welcome & introduction (Giovanni Colavizza)

11.10 Talk: Setting the scene to cite software (Jez Cope & Frances Madden, BL & Neil Chue Hong, SSI)

• Where we are now? What issues do we face currently?
• Current landscape of the scholarly record - Jez Cope
• Updating the scholarly comm system to recognise software - Neil Chue Hong
• Tracking software through PIDs - Frances Madden

11.35 Talk: Follow the data citation! Lesson from other outputs (Sarah Jones, Digital Curation Centre)

12.00 Requirements brainstorm exercise (Introducer: Frances Madden)

• Provide three things that would enable your “ideal” software citation scenario: where you want to get to?
• What would the ideal scenario look like?

12.30 Lunch

13.30 Breakout groups 1: Challenges (introducer: Giovanni Colavizza)

• What challenges do you face to get enable the requirements provided lunch to become feasible? What is stopping us from reaching the ideal scenario? (20 mins)
• How do you prioritise these challenges by urgency and importance (20 mins)

14.15 Reporting back (Chair: Giovanni Colavizza)

14.30 Talk: Case study - TBC

14.50 Break

15:00 Breakout groups 2: Solutions (Introducer: Frances Madden)

• What solutions would enable these challenges to be addressed? What is required to implement them? (20 mins)
• How do you prioritise these solutions by urgency and importance (20 mins)

15.45 Reporting back (Chair: Frances Madden)

16.10 Wrapping up (Jez Cope / Neil Chue Hong)

16.30 Close of Workshop Day 2

Participants to Day 2 of the workshop should note that there are additional access requirements for the British Library Boardroom which will be emailed to them.