EAGER: : Best Practices and Models for Sustainability for Robust Cyberinfrastructure Software

美国国家科学基金会持续创新软件基础设施(SI2)计划征集声明，软件是“美国国家科学基金会21世纪科学与工程网络基础设施框架(CIF21)愿景的核心”，并继续强调，总的来说，软件对于计算和数据支持的科学是必不可少的。事实上，SI2计划是NSF希望实现持续和良好支持的软件的一个工具，该软件提供美国科学和工程界所需的服务和功能。这项为期一年的网络基础设施项目研究将确定在开发、部署和支持强大的网络基础设施软件方面的最佳实践。通过详细的案例研究和对软件生产者和用户的调查，调查人员将确定将软件从“发现”过程转移到21世纪科学和工程的良好维护和可持续基础设施的过程中的最佳实践，特别关注以下几点：给定一件提供有趣功能的软件，以及想要使用(并可能有助于进一步开发)该软件的社区，需要采取哪些步骤将该软件从“有趣的工具”转变为“国家基础设施的健壮和广泛使用的元素，为国家科学基金对CIF21的愿景做出贡献”--然后可持续地支持和维护该工具？这项研究将导致更多可广泛使用的软件工具和课程材料，提高计算机科学、计算科学和STEM学科的教育质量。

The NSF Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program solicitation states that software is "central to NSF's vision of a Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21)," and goes on to emphasize that in general software is essential to computational and data-enabled science. Indeed, the SI2 program is one vehicle by which the NSF hopes to enable sustained and well supported software providing services and functionality needed by the US science and engineering community. This yearlong study of cyberinfrastructure projects will identify best practices in the development, deployment, and support of robust cyberinfrastructure software. Through a combination of detailed case studies and surveys of software producers and users, the investigators will identify best practices for the process of moving software from a "discovery" process to well maintained and sustainable infrastructure for 21st century science and engineering, focusing in particular on the following: Given a piece of software that provides interesting capabilities and a community that wants to use (and possibly contribute to the further development of) that software, what steps are necessary to transform that software from "interesting tool" to "robust and widely used element of national infrastructure, contributing to the NSF vision for CIF21" - ands then support and maintain that tool sustainably? This research will lead to greater availability of widely usable software tools and curriculum materials, increasing the quality of education in computer science, computational science, and STEM disciplines.