Collaborative Research: EAGER: Characterizing Research Software from NSF Awards

软件是过去60年来许多国家经济进步的基础，从提高生产力的更好的天气模型到降低材料使用和成本的设计更好的产品。这些进步大多源于研究软件，最初是通过算法和许可，最近是通过开源代码。尽管取得了许多成功，但在科学和工程研究中产生的许多软件都是不可持续的--它们没有以能够实现有意义的重用的方式进行共享、维护或开发。这种缺乏可持续发展的情况阻碍了研究和经济进步。利用自我报告和行政数据相结合，该项目正在系统地调查由国家科学基金会资助的研究项目中产生的软件的开发和维护。本研究收集的数据正在用于开发一套研究软件可持续发展规划的模型。这些模型支持科学家和工程师规划软件的可持续性;帮助研究资助机构更好地准备评估赠款申请中的研究软件，并使支持软件开发和维护的机构能够支持有影响力的研究，从而产生有影响力的研究软件。该项目的目标是：1）通过从资助的研究项目中收集数据，了解哪些因素影响软件的可持续性; 2）描述当前的可持续性规划模型，并提出可能增加实现长期软件可持续性的可能性的新模型;（3）发展新兴的软件可持续性评估方法。数据收集，以满足这些目标包括一项调查和采访的研究人员已经产生的软件作为一个NSF资助的奖项的一部分。该项目还使用新兴的方法来分析研究软件代码库，以了解软件开发中的哪些活动与可持续性相关。本研究有三个预期的影响：1）提供一个概念验证的大规模分析研究软件的可持续性使用混合方法的方法; 2）修改现有的标准化度量的软件健康，使他们可以用来评估研究软件的可持续性;以及3）创建一套初始的可持续性模型，研究人员可以使用这些模型来更好地规划研究软件项目，资助者可以使用这些模型来做出更好的奖励决定，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Software underlies many of the national economic advances of the last 60 years, from better weather models that enable more productivity to better-designed products that lower material usage and costs. Most of these advances originated in research software, initially via algorithms and licensing, and more recently via open-source code. Despite these numerous successes, much of the software produced in science and engineering research is not sustainable - it is not shared, maintained, or developed in ways that enable meaningful reuse. This lack of sustainable development hampers both research and economic progress. Using a combination of self-reported and administrative data this project is systematically investigating the development and maintenance of software produced in research projects funded by the National Science Foundation. The data collected for this study is being used to develop a set of models for research software sustainability planning. These models support scientists and engineers planning for software sustainability; help research funding agencies be better prepared to evaluate research software in grant applications, and enable institutions that support software development and maintenance to be equipped to support impactful research that in turn, produces impactful research software.The goals of this project are: 1) to understand what factors influence software sustainability by gathering data from grant-funded research projects; 2) to describe current models of sustainability planning and suggest potential new models that could increase the likelihood of achieving long-term software sustainability; and 3) to develop emergent methods to evaluate research software sustainability. Data collection to meet these goals includes a survey and interviews with researchers that have produced software as part of an NSF-funded award. This project also uses emerging methods in analyzing research software code repositories in order to understand what activities in software development correlate with sustainability. This research has three intended impacts: 1) to provide a proof of concept for large-scale analysis of research software sustainability using a mixed-methods approach; 2) to modify existing standardized metrics of software health so that they can be used to evaluate the sustainability of research software; and 3) to create an initial set of sustainability models that researchers can use to better plan research software projects, funders can use to make better award decisions, and institutions can use to better allocate internal resources.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.