Collaborative Research: EAGER: Characterizing Research Software from NSF Awards

协作研究：EAGER：获得 NSF 奖项的研究软件特征

• 批准号: 2211277
• 负责人: Jeffrey Carver
• 金额: $ 1.08万
• 依托单位: University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-15 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2211277&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; EAGER; Characterizing; Software

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.

软件是过去60年来的许多国家经济进步的基础，从更好的天气模型到能够提高生产力到更好地设计的产品，以降低物质使用和成本的降低。这些进步大多数源自研究软件，最初是通过算法和许可，以及最近通过开源代码。尽管取得了许多成功，但在科学和工程研究中生产的许多软件都不可持续 - 它并未以能够有意义的重复使用的方式共享，维护或开发。这种缺乏可持续发展会阻碍研究和经济进步。通过自我报告和行政数据的结合，该项目正在系统地研究由国家科学基金会资助的研究项目中生产的软件的开发和维护。为这项研究收集的数据用于开发一组用于研究软件可持续性计划的模型。这些模型支持为软件可持续性计划的科学家和工程师；帮助研究资助机构做好更好的准备，以评估赠款应用程序中的研究软件，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，这些研究反过来又生产了有影响力的研究软件。该项目的目标是：1）哪些因素通过从赠款资助的研究项目中收集数据来了解软件可持续性； 2）描述当前的可持续性计划模型并提出潜在的新模型，以增加实现长期软件可持续性的可能性； 3）开发出紧急方法来评估研究软件的可持续性。达到这些目标的数据收集包括对NSF资助奖的一部分生产软件的研究人员进行的调查和访谈。该项目还使用新兴方法分析研究软件代码存储库，以了解软件开发中哪些与可持续性相关的活动。这项研究具有三种预期的影响：1）提供概念验证，以使用混合方法进行大规模分析研究软件的可持续性； 2）修改现有的软件健康标准化指标，以便可以用来评估研究软件的可持续性； 3）为了创建一组最初的可持续性模型，研究人员可以用来更好地计划研究软件项目，资助者可以用来做出更好的奖励决策，并且机构可以用来更好地分配内部资源。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子和更广泛影响的评估来审查审查标准来通过评估来获得支持的。