EAGER: Measuring the Impact and Diffusion of Open Source Software Innovation on Contributor and Project Networks

开源软件（OSS）是通过独立开发人员以及来自大学、政府研究机构、企业和非营利组织的个人和团体的贡献来开发、维护和扩展的。许多OSS项目是在自由存储库中开发的，并且嵌入在这些存储库中的信息——包括代码、贡献者和开发活动——是公开可用的。然而，开放源码软件对经济和创新的程度和影响目前是未知的，开放源码软件的创造和使用突出了科学和技术指标中没有捕捉到的技术扩散和流动的一个方面。这个项目的目标是发现、收集和使用关于OSS的公开可用的非调查数据源，并测试开发方法的可行性，以衡量OSS创新的影响和传播。该项目将通过开发严格的、可重复的、可伸缩的方法和度量来评估OSS。这项工作的产出——独特的数据集、代码，以及贡献者和项目之间相互作用的结果分析——推进了我们关于OSS的新生知识，包括协作的模式和动态、有影响力的参与者、流行的主题和传播。制定的措施将补充关于同行评议出版物和专利的现有指标。我们的框架可以应用于开放科学的其他方面，比如公共存储库中可用的共享数据。为了解决我们的核心问题，我们建议(i)通过分析有关OSS项目（创建和使用）和开发人员（机构、部门和国家）的可用信息来描述OSS生态系统；（ii）表示使用贡献者网络（通过开发人员之间的协作）和OSS项目网络（通过跨项目和共享贡献者的重用）的交互，并分析其结构特征；（iii）制订方法，使用基于网络和oss的措施（例如下载）来衡量项目和开发人员的影响；（iv）研究开放源码软件创新在机构、部门和国家内部和之间的传播；(v)结合开放源码软件的不同数据来源，提出独特而新颖的数据产品。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

Open-Source Software (OSS) is developed, maintained, and extended through the contribution of independent developers as well as individuals and groups from universities, government research institutions, businesses, and nonprofits. Many OSS projects are developed in free repositories, and the information embedded in these repositories - including the code, contributors, and development activity - is publicly available. However, the extent and impacts of OSS on the economy and innovation are currently unknown, and the creation and use of OSS highlight an aspect of technology diffusion and flow not captured in science and technology indicators. The goals of this project are to discover, collect, and use publicly available non-survey data sources on OSS and to test the feasibility of developing methods to measure the impact and diffusion of OSS innovation. The project will evaluate OSS through development of rigorous, repeatable, and scalable methods and metrics. The outputs of this effort — unique data sets, code, and the resulting analyses of the interactions among contributors and projects — advance our nascent knowledge about OSS, including the patterns and dynamics of collaborations, influential actors, prevailing topics, and diffusion. Developed measures will complement existing indicators on peer-reviewed publications and patents. Our framework could apply to other aspects of open science, such as shared data available in public repositories.To address our core questions, we propose (i) to characterize the OSS ecosystem by analyzing available information on OSS projects (creation and use), and developers (institutions, sectors, and countries); (ii) to represent the interactions using networks of contributors (through collaborations between developers) and networks of OSS projects (through reuses across projects and shared contributors) and to analyze their structural features; (iii) to develop methods to measure the impact of projects and developers using network-based and OSS-based measures (e.g., downloads); (iv) to study the diffusion of OSS innovation within and across institutions, sectors and countries; and (v) to bring forward a unique and novel data product combining various data sources on OSS.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.