The FAIR-IMPACT project launched in June 2022, has the role to support and disseminate FAIR-enabling practices, tools and services across scientific communities at a European, national and international level. Software Heritage’s role in the project is to establish guidelines for the collection and the curation of metadata to archive, reference, describe and cite research software. In June 2023, the Research Software MetaData (RSMD) Guidelines were published on Zenodo following a community workshop in March and a community review webinar in May.

Understanding the RSMD Guidelines

The RSMD Guidelines, written by Task 4.3 in the FAIR-IMPACT project, provide a comprehensive framework, offering flexible and adaptable recommendations for end-users across various disciplines and software development contexts. This deliverable encompasses:

• Introduction of goals, methodology, and use cases
• State-of-the-art review of existing practices and guidelines
• Comprehensive analysis of the metadata landscape
• Proposal for RSMD guidelines to collect and curate research software metadata
• A clear checklist for researchers

A living version of the document version will be available on the RSMD Guidelines repository.

Moving toward adoption

The journey doesn’t end with the proposal. Task 4.3 is committed to making the RSMD Guidelines normative within the academic community. This involves ongoing engagement with stakeholders, gathering feedback, and incorporating best practices and advancements in metadata management. By establishing these guidelines as a norm, the aim is to promote widespread adoption and adherence, leading to greater standardization and harmonization of metadata practices across research domains.

We offer two support actions that are designed to enhance the FAIRness and impact of research software:

• Path I: Assessing and improving existing research software using a new extension of F-UJI which implements some of the metrics for automated FAIR software assessment. Successful applicants to this support action will receive 4000 € to support their participation between May-September 2024.
• Path II: Implementing the Research Software MetaData guidelines for better archiving, referencing, describing, and citing research software artefacts. Successful applicants to this support action will receive 6000 € to support their participation between May-September 2024.

How can I implement the RSMD guidelines in the FAIR-IMPACT Open Call?

This goal can be achieved in many forms with the high-level purpose to better archive, reference, describe and cite research software artifacts.

Participants in path II of the support action will suggest implementation activities in their own resources or contributions to Open Source / Open Science existing projects, such as CodeMeta.

Mentored by software metadata experts, participants will strive to implement the RSMD guidelines, throughout a month-long challenge and will complete it by writing  a detailed implementation story to showcase the adoption of the RSMD guidelines. The outputs will be released in open access via Zenodo.

This support action will consist of four virtual workshops.

• Introductory session to provide context and background and to introduce scholarly infrastructures and tools to make Research Software a first class output (May);
• Introduction to the RSMD guidelines and examples of adoption (May);
• One day sprint to progress planned implementation activity (June);
• Post-assessment workshop where the Implementation story will be presented (September).

How to submit your proposal?

Apply on the Open Call page, after creating an account, you’ll find the form on the grants application dashboard. applications should include:

• Your name, contact details and organisational affiliation. Where the application is being made on behalf of a group, a nominated lead participant will need to provide these details;
• The type of organisation you are based at; The country you are based in (Please note that applicants must work in a European Union or Associated Country for the duration of the grant. For a full list of Associated Countries see here);
• Proposal for implementing the RSMD guidelines (Max. 500 words): What are the objectives of your proposed Research Software MetaData (RSMD) implementation? Additionally, specify how you plan to achieve this objective. A few examples are listed below
  • CodeMeta mapping tools;
  • Import/export tools in a software infrastructure;
  • UI improvements to facilitate software submissions;
  • SWHID exposure on software record;
  • Institutional documentation based on the RSMD guidelines;
  • Contribution to the existing CodeMeta generator or to the CodeMeta community.
    • contributing to the crosswalks
    • contributing to the documentation and to the user/developer guides
• Impact, adoption and dissemination
  • Describe how your participation in this support action will impact your work/project.
  • Describe how participating in the support action will support the wider adoption and uptake in your field of the tools, methods, and/or solutions employed.
  • Describe how you will disseminate the results of your participation in this support action.

Conclusion

The FAIR-IMPACT open call, with its focus on enhancing research software FAIRness and implementing metadata guidelines, presents a significant opportunity for collaboration and advancement. Together, let’s adopt and implement the RSMD Guidelines and work towards a future where research software is acknowledged as a first class output.

For further inquiries about the RSMD Guidelines or the FAIR-IMPACT project, feel free to reach out to: opencalls[at]fair-impact.eu

Your contributions are invaluable as we strive to build a more open and curated research software landscape.

The start of 2023 witnessed the Software Heritage symposium and summit held at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, France. This collaborative event with UNESCO focused on the international conference themed “Software Source Code as documentary heritage and an enabler for sustainable development.” The program extensively delved into five primary dimensions:

• Understanding software source code as documentary heritage and its role in digital skills education;
• Considering software source code as a research object in open science;
• Examining software source code’s impact on innovation and sharing in industry and administration;
• Discussing long-term preservation perspectives, and
• Reviewing technological advances in software source code analysis.

UNESCO – Paris | © Inria / Photo B. Fourrier

The event gathered our community, including team members, ambassadors, grantees, partners, and contributors who discussed the Software Heritage Archive and various aspects of its mission. The dedicated blog post offers a summary of the workshop’s key points, and our annual report, presented as a standalone document for the first time, gives an overview of our progress.

We suggest reading UNESCO’s article, , “Positioning software source code as digital heritage for sustainable development“, the complete transcript is accessible in PDF format.

The event’s recording is also available online for those who couldn’t attend.

In 2023, we welcomed 10 new ambassadors to our cause, 5 women and 5 men, bringing the count of our team of ambassadors to 33 worldwide. We featured several ambassador articles this year: one by Simon Phipps titled “Open Source ensures code remains a part of culture” advocating for the preservation of software as a cultural element through Open Source, one by Agustin Bethencourt titled “Why did I become a Software Heritage Ambassador?” that delves into the significance of Software Heritage within the industry, and one titled  “Viewpoints on software in research at the Gustave Eiffel University“, an interview with Céline Rousselot and Joenio Marques da Costa.

Throughout the year, the ambassador community held two plenary sessions, in close contact with the Software Heritage core team. One key topic has been software metadata, a complex but essential issue, that is detailed in the article  “Deep Dive into the archival of Software Metadata”. A special effort has been made to present the broad lines of the 2023 Software Heritage technical roadmap, that has been published in the first quarter of 2023.

Supporting Open Source

At Software Heritage, we remain committed to advocating for the importance of open-source software and its role in shaping the future of technology. This is why we co-signed an open letter with the Eclipse Foundation on the Cyber Resilience Act. The objective of this new regulation is to ensure the safety and security of our digital infrastructure, including software, but we must make sure that it does not hinder the progress and innovation of open-source software as an unintended side effect. You can read the open letter and learn more about this important topic on the Eclipse Foundation’s website.

Building a collaboration infrastructure

We know that to succeed in the humbling mission we have undertaken we need to enalbe a large community to contribute and collaborate. This year we are happy to report several key adavances in this direction.

We concluded a multi year effort conducted with help by Open Tech Strategies to transition our development and operations from our previous system to our own GitLab instance, that is more familiar for external contributors.

We opened a new documentation landing page at docs.softwareheritage.org to make it easier for newcomers to find their way in the vast amount of documentation available.

We have been working to make it easier for developers to regularly archive their software in Software Heritage by introducing the dedicated save code webhooks in the API for several popular forges and technologies: Bitbucket, Gitea, GitHub, Gitlab and Sourceforge.

Last, but not least, we have introduced a GRaphQL API, that greatly simplifies programmatic access to the archive: users can play with it usint the Software Heritage GraphQL Explorer. This is an addition to the traditional Software Heritage’s REST API that will enable clients to craft robust queries and seamlessly retrieve server data.

SWHID sees growing adoption adn becomes the Software Hash Identifier

A key part of the Software Heritage infrastructure are the persistent identifiers known as SWHID, that allow to guarantee integrity of software artefact without relying on third parties, enabling better scientific reproductibilit.

This year, SWHID adoption has been growing in academia. A close collaboration wich CCSD and IES-INRIA led to opening up SWHID deposit on HAL since January 2023 to all french researchers, massively simplifying the referencing research software in french institutional portals, and the generation of the many reports often requested in an academic career. At an international level, the Computer Graphic Replicability Stamp Initiative (GRSI) now uses Software Heritage to archive software associated to research articles, and uses SWHIDs to reference it: when a code is accepted for the Replicability Stamp, it relies on Software Heritage to create a snapshot of the project and references the accepted version with the corresponding SWHID.

The SWHD identifier has been developed at Software Heritage, where it has been in use in our archive for almost a decade. Since it can be computed independently, and used of a variety of other applications, the time has come to create and independent specification, to ensure that all stakeholders can benefit from it. To this end, after almost two years of intense work an open working group has released the publicly available specification of the SWHID, that is now spelled “Software Hash Identifier” and no longer “Software Heritage Identifier” (pronounce it /ˈswɪd/).

Software Heritage in European Research Projects

At Software Heritage, we have a long tradition of participating to collaborative research project when we can help improve the way research software is archived, referenced, descibed and cited. On the infrastructural side of Open Science, groundbreaking work is ongoing in a dedicated work package in the FAIRCORE4EOSC European project, to connect scholarly infrastructures with the Software Heritage archive. The first visible outcome is the partnership initiated with the swMATH portal to bridge mathematical publications with comprehensive software records, enriching the scholarly landscape. This year, we also contributed to a collaborative effort by two such projects,  FAIR-IMPACT and FAIRCORE4OSC during the RDA P20 plenary in Gothenburg.

Software Heritage in also part of the SoFAIR project, recently awarded through the CHISTERA Open Research Data & Software Call, whose goal is to elevate the discoverability and reusability of open research software, aligning with our commitment to advancing the accessibility of software source code artifacts.

Research on Software Heritage

Campus Cyber – Paris | © Inria / Photo B. Fourrier

Software Heritage is an archive, but also an exceptional infrastructure to enable research on software develoment. This year, we embarked in the SWHSec project, announced during the launch of a new national research and innovation program on cybersecurity – PTCC. This groundbreaking initiative brings together eight expert research teams specializing in security, software engineering, and open-source software to harness the power of Software Heritage’s robust infrastructure and create cutting-edge tools for cybersecurity.

Software Heritage and Large Language Models for Code

We acknowledge the huge potential of the Software Heritage archive for the training of machine learning models, particularly large language models (LLMs) that can automatically generate code to assist with software development tasks. In alignment with our mission, we advocate for a transparent and respectful approach to the development of these models, aligned with our mission, as detailed in our statement for acceptable machine learning use of the Software Heritage archive.

Saving Inria’s software legacy

In the pursuit of safeguarding Inria’s software legacy, we started a collaboration with the Inria alumni network and the Direction of Culture and Scientific Information (DCIS) to reach out to, and invite former individuals who had worked at Inria to participate in enriching the inventory of software heritage created at Inria since its inception.

Leveraging the Software Stories interface, created in 2021 in collaboration with the Science Stories team and the University of Pisa with UNESCO’s support, a first result of this effort is the publication of the story of the web browser and editor Amaya. 

Software, a pillar of Open Science

Software, and its source code, is a pillar of Open Science, and Software Heritage has been recognized by the Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) for its key role in ensuring continuous access to software as a research output. We look forward to seeing many new members join the newly created Archives and Libraries Interest Group (ALIG) that will bring together academic stakeholders worldwide.

Thanks to our sponsors

We’re grateful to our sponsors, including our new additions Hugging Face, ServiceNow, and Scanoss: it is their continued support that enables us to make progress in this long term mission.

First international mirror

And we finished this intense year with the launch of the first international mirror of the Software Heritage Mirror Network by ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development.  This is a key milestone in the long-term preservation strategy of all our software commons, and is the result of long years of technical and organisational development efforts that will make it much easier for the other forthcoming mirrors to go into production.

Roberto Di Cosmo
Director, Software Heritage

The hybrid event, offering both virtual and on-site participation, will take place from 14:00 to 18:00 and will showcase distinguished speakers and panels discussing key aspects, such as software as documentary heritage, scientific challenges, and its role in open science for both the industry and public administration. The complete program is available on the event page.

To secure your spot, please register for the event using this form. Depending on seat availability, you will receive an invitation.

Stay tuned for updates, and be sure to mark your calendars for a unique exploration of our software heritage.

Wendy Hagenmaier is the Software Preservation Program Manager at Yale University Library, where she leads the Emulation-as-a-Service Infrastructure (EaaSI) program to empower the widespread use of emulation for interaction with software, computer systems, collections, and data. The Yale University Library software preservation team is building an emulation infrastructure that cultural heritage and research practitioners from around the world will be able to use to access their historical software and software-dependent content. Source code is integral to the Library’s cultural heritage collections and to the research enterprise of the university.

Wendy has served as Strategic Coordinator for the Software Preservation Network’s Coordinating Committee and seeks to foster collaboration and build alliances among organizations engaged in software preservation and curation. In 2022, she co-authored a white paper on “Supporting Software Preservation Services in Research and Memory Organizations,” based on survey and interview research with practitioners engaged in software preservation activities.

Wendy was delighted to participate in the 2022 SWHAP Days event and 2023 SWHAP Workshop and is grateful for the opportunity to support the Software Heritage mission by becoming an ambassador. She believes software preservation and curation are global challenges that require international cooperation, relationship-building, and understanding.

If you want to contact Wendy or to learn more about our mission, she will be happy to answer you back!

And do not forget! We are looking for enthusiastic organizations and individuals to volunteer as ambassadors to help grow the Software Heritage community. If you too want to become an ambassador, please tell us a bit about yourself and your interest in the mission of Software Heritage.

You can visit the ENEA mirror today, available at https://mirror.softwareheritage.enea.it/ .

The Software Heritage Mirror network

Software Heritage archives, collects, preserves and makes accessible the source code of all publicly available software in the world, building a modern Library of Alexandria of software source code. An important part of Software Heritage’s strategy is the development of an international network of mirrors, implemented using a variety of storage technologies, running in various administrative domains, controlled by different institutions, and located in different jurisdictions. The mirror network will provide much higher resilience than multiple copies under our own administrative control.

In our pursuit to prevent information loss and enhance global access to humanity’s software commons, we are actively constructing an international network of mirrors. A mirror, within this context, represents a comprehensive duplicate of the Software Heritage universal source code archive. These mirrors operate in agreement with, yet independently from, the Software Heritage organization.

A collaborative effort

© ENEA – Agenzia nazionale

ENEA has always been at the forefront of public service and technological advancements. ENEA’s mirror is located at its Bologna Center, a hub of innovation and research. This strategic placement further enhances the accessibility and reach of the mirror, serving as a focal point for researchers, developers, and technology enthusiasts across Italy and worldwide.

ENEA’s mirror operates in close collaboration with the Software Heritage organization while maintaining its independence. ENEA ensures the seamless replication of the Software Heritage universal source code archive.

© Marcello Artioli

The journey ahead

ENEA’s successful establishment of its mirror serves as an invitation for other institutions, organizations, and stakeholders to join the Software Heritage Mirror Network. By expanding this network, we create a robust and distributed infrastructure capable of withstanding information loss and promoting global accessibility to our collective software heritage.

Join us in celebrating ENEA’s mirror and its invaluable contribution to the Software Heritage Mirror Network. Together, we will continue to safeguard the past, empower the present, and shape the future of software development and innovation.

On Nov. 13th, 2023, our ambassador Joenio Marques da Costa delivered a talk during a session of “Rendez-vous Data”, by “Data Univ Eiffel”, the data and software management cluster implemented at Gustave Eiffel University. This local cluster is part of the French national network of clusters dedicated to data management. This network is supported by the French Ministry for Higher Education and Research.
An interview with Céline Rousselot and Joenio Marques da Costa.

Hello Céline. Please, could you introduce yourself and explain what is your role?

My name is Céline Rousselot and I am a data librarian at the University Gustave Eiffel. I work at the “Open Science department” (in French “Diffusion des Savoirs et Ouverture à la Société”), which is part of the vice presidency for “Research and Innovation”.
I support research teams in managing and opening their datasets. I coordinate “DATA Univ Eiffel”, the data management cluster of the university.
In 2022, DATA Univ Eiffel integrates the French national network of clusters dedicated to data management “Recherche Data Gouv”. It provides training and support in data and software management, in order to raise awareness and to disseminate best practices to the research team. It brings together expertise from various departments and vice-presidencies: IT department, legal department, research and innovation vice-presidency, partnership and professionalization vice-presidency.

Hello Joenio. Please, could you tell us what is your role?

My name is Joenio Marques da Costa. At the LISIS lab (Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés), I’m a research software engineer and backend developer. In other terms, I write research software to support the work of the researchers in the laboratory. Currently, I’m involved in 2 software development projects created and maintained by my team:
(1) CorTexT Manager (www.cortext.net) – A data analysis platform for citizens and researchers in the social sciences and humanities – https://docs.cortext.net, and
(2) Risis Core Facility (RCF) – A software web platform for the European Research Infrastructure for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies (RISIS) – https://docs.risis.io

Joenio, why did you become a Software Heritage ambassador?

I became an ambassador because I’ve been following Software Heritage since its conception phase: I studied the topic of research software sustainability, visibility, preservation and recognition during my master’s thesis, published at the end of 2017: On The Sustainability of Academic Software: the Case of Static Analysis Tools.
So, when a friend from the LISIS shared with me the open call to become an ambassador, I decided to apply because I was already advocating in favour of Software Heritage within the lab.

Joenio, as an ambassador, which type of support can you provide?

As an ambassador, I can present the Software Heritage library, explaining its main goals. Thus, I can deliver live and practical demonstrations of the library’s features. I like to teach! As I’m also a certified The Carpentries instructor, I can apply my instructor skills to run workshops to discover how to teach good practices about software preservation, software development, software citation, open science, Free Software and how those topics can contribute to the whole scientific endeavor.

Besides that, I can contribute by writing documentation and discovering opportunities to link Software Heritage community with other communities to which I belong, such as The Carpentries, the Debian project or the Live Coding Community (i.e.: Live Coding is a Art and Technology community making art with source code), among others.

The “DATA Univ Eiffel” and the workshop series dedicated to data management

Céline, what is the target audience of an “Atelier de la donnée”?

The target audience of “DATA Univ Eiffel” is research teams: researchers, engineers and doctoral candidates. We noticed that some support staff members (i.e.: institutional and commercial relations department, project assistance, etc.) also attended our webinars and training courses.

Céline, what motivated you to introduce the topic of research software in a workshop series dedicated to data management?

Since this year, on a regular basis, Data Univ Eiffel organizes webinars called “RDV DATA”, in order to present tools and best practices for data management and dissemination. These webinars are dedicated to data as well as software. Indeed, the best practices for software are evolving and data and software management share many similarities.
As the University’s research teams develop and distribute open source software, we organize a specific “RDV DATA” on platforms for software development, sharing and preservation.

Software in research

Joenio, based upon for experience as a trainer and as research software engineer, what are the three current misconceptions about software in research? And how do you address them?

I would say that the 3 most usual misconceptions are:

(1) The belief that software source code would be useful only for execution. Some people think that if the code is not very well written, or poorly documented, it is not useful to publish it for other users. But software source code is an important artifact for the society as it contains knowledge that is important to be shared. (note: see “Open Source ensures code remains a part of culture” https://www.softwareheritage.org/2023/05/05/software-preservation/ )
The source code can be used in many other ways than execution: in the software engineering field for instance, people can extract source code metrics to get a better understanding about some internal aspects of a software project. It is possible to measure the size of a software project straight from reading the source code.

(2) Another common misconception is that if someone shares the source code of a research software project, then their peers and collegues would scrutinize its level of quality. Thus, some researchers who create research software believe that the source code they wrote is not good enough and they would feel reluctant to share it, thinking that the scientific community will judge it negatively.
In response, I would say that the community doesn’t evaluate the source code quality this way. From my experience, when people check the source code, they usually do this in order to improve it, because there is a genuine interest from them.

(3) A final common a priori is that some developers think that once they would widely open the source code, there will be tons of contributions that will require extra work for code review.

Joenio, what are the most frequent questions that people ask you when you deliver a talk or a training about research software?

I can’t say that one question systematically arises when I talk about research software, but a frequent concern is about archiving solutions: there are so many platforms for archiving digital artifacts, Zenodo, HAL, Figshare, Software Heritage, etc. What is the best place to archive software? Usually I recommend using Software Heritage to archive software source code.

Joenio, what would you say to an end-user who would tell you “There are already too many platforms. I’m getting lost. Why should I use Software Heritage in addition with all the other existing solutions?”

I would say that it’s understandable to get lost among so many platforms, so many concepts, new words, new subjects, etc.
But I need to remind that software source code preservation is important, and we must be sure that all the software source code publicly available is archived for the long term.
It’s important from many point of views: in research, it is crucial to open the door to replication studies.
Added to this, as many research software projects are funded with public money, then it’s fair to share it back with the whole society. Thus, the knowledge encapsulated in the software source code will be available for the next generations.
Said that, I would say that the Software Heritage archive is the only infrastructure commited to archive software source code in the long term perspective, in a transparent approach, and that’s why it’s worth spending time to better understand it.

Data steward role with research software

Joenio and Céline: suppose I just started as data steward in my university. Regarding research software, what should I scrutinize first?

Joenio: I would recommend first to take a look on the FAIR principles, to understand how important it is to make research data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/). Then, as the second step I recommend to take a look on FAIR for Research Software (https://fair-software.eu) to understand how to properly manage software development in a open and transparent way. This can be done by publicly sharing the source code on a platform like Gitlab or GitHub for instance. Or even better, by checking if your university provides a Gitlab instance, like the Univ Gustave Eiffel does: https://gitlab.univ-eiffel.fr/.
As a third step, I believe it would be important within the institution, to nurture the discussion on those topics by organizing workshops or training sessions on how to publish software source code, how to manage software development, and other good practices.
One good strategy would be to take advantage of existing networks. The framework provided by The Carpentries provide support to run workshops dedicated to computational skills, in a research context.

Céline: Newcomers working on software should get to know the institutional tools and platforms. Spotting where are the experts may also be relevant.
On our university intranet, we provide research teams with information on software development, share and use and legal aspects. In addition to the intranet, a page on the university website is dedicated to data and software.
Another piece of advice would be also to read the booklet “Open science – source code and software” written by the experts of the French committee for Open Science (CoSo).

Newcomers may also contact their peers with software expertise. As part of DATA Univ Eiffel, we are setting up a network of DATA ambassadors. Some of them, like Joenio, are software experts. The list of the ambassadors is also available on the University intranet.

Take home messages

Joenio and Céline: according to you, following the workshop delivered at Gustave Eiffel University, what would be the take home message that you’d like to share?

Céline: Attendance at the “RDV DATA” webinars is relatively high for our university. In my opinion, this shows that the webinar meets a need for information about research data and software. The format also seems adapted.
Workshops always take place during the lunch break, from 1pm to 2pm. People are generally more available at this time during which it’s also easier to get informal discussions and peer-to-peer feedback. Webinars are recorded so that the replay is available.
The aim is to share experience. I would like to invite anyone from the university or elsewhere to suggest topics for these “RDV DATA”.

Joenio: I would say that this kind of event is crucial and there are many rooms to replicate it in different contexts, with different user profiles, including different research fields. For instance, it would be nice to schedule webinars with Social Science people, or with Economists, Artists, and so on.
The “RDV DATA” webinar we’ve delivered in November 13th 2023 exceeded my expectations in terms of number of participants. And it was a very good surprise to see that at least 5 colleagues from my research unit attended too the session.

— Interview by Sabrina Granger

Useful resources

Slides by Joenio:
https://joenio.me/software-heritage-uge-data

Watch RDV DATA replay :
https://clap.univ-eiffel.fr/permalink/v12666c5f7d7cnb97dk8/iframe/

Examples of Carpentries lessons: How to use Version Control with Git ; R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis.

Nowogrodzki, A. (2019). How to support open-source software and stay sane. Nature, 571(7763), 133–134. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02046-0

Phipps, S. (2023) “Open Source ensures code remains a part of culture” https://www.softwareheritage.org/2023/05/05/software-preservation/

Varoquaux, G. (2020, May 28). Technical discussions are hard; a few tips. Gael-Varoquaux.Info. http://gael-varoquaux.info/programming/technical-discussions-are-hard-a-few-tips.html

Ask for an ambassador:
https://www.softwareheritage.org/ambassadors/

You would like to share your experience about software in research? Please, get in touch with us: https://www.softwareheritage.org/contact/

The SoFAIR project, derived from Making Software FAIR, is dedicated to addressing a critical issue in research by interconnecting publications with the software they use, develop or share, improving the findability and accessibility of research software, two of the FAIR principles, originally designed for data. Leveraging the existing capabilities of open scholarly infrastructures operated by project partners, SoFAIR is a €499k international collaboration coordinated by (1) The Open University, in conjunction with (2) Inria, France; (3) Brno University of Technology, Czech Republic; (4) the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), Poland; and (5) The European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), United Kingdom.

The SoFAIR Project Partners

Software Heritage’s key contribution to the SoFAIR project will be to ensure that software mentioned in research articles, as detected through advanced machine learning processes, will be preserved in the Software Heritage archive, and persistently referenced using the SWHID identifier that will be exposed alongside the publications, enhancing reproducibility of research results. Software Heritage will also collect all the metadata created during the process, to enhance the quality of the information available about software preserved in its archive.

After a master’s degree in applied mathematics, Frédéric has been working since 2010 as a data analyst in PACEA, a research laboratory in archaeological sciences at the CNRS and University of Bordeaux. His research activities are focused on statistical methods allowing for establishing the biological profile of individuals in biological or forensic anthropology, such as age and sex estimation. He is mainly an R user, but has a broad interest in free and open-source software. Frédéric also teaches good practices for scientific programming and open science to several audiences, ranging from master’s students to researchers in humanities and social sciences. Specifically involved in the topics of code sharing and computational reproducibility, becoming a Software Heritage ambassador is a natural extension of his commitment to open science. In his field, which is getting more and more technical with a heavy use of 3D imaging and, more recently, various applications of artificial intelligence, there is a strong need to ensure the long-term availability of source code software.

If you want to contact him or to learn more about our mission, he will be happy to answer you back!

And do not forget! We are looking for enthusiastic organizations and individuals to volunteer as ambassadors to help grow the Software Heritage community. If you too want to become an ambassador, please tell us a bit about yourself and your interest in the mission of Software Heritage.

We look forward to seeing SCOSS members join the newly created Archives and Libraries Interest Group (ALIG), which will serve as a forum for discussing Software Source Code preservation and exploring the possibilities offered by Software Heritage to champion best practices for research software accessibility, reusability, and reproducibility.

Who can help?

SCOSS Members, libraries, archives, institutions and research funders supporting open science can make a difference by committing to fund Software Heritage. Pledge an annual donation for three years, offering a secure financial foundation and access to the dedicated Software Heritage ALIG.

Discover the detailed pledging program in the section dedicated to the 5th pledging round on the official SCOSS website.

To pledge your support, or learn more about the program, you can write to alig@softwareheritage.org.

With SCOSS support, we aim to strengthen the links with key players in open science, and popularise the best practices in source code archival. 

Have you heard about swMATH?

swMATH is the world’s most extensive catalogue for mathematical software and exposes more than 42000 software in the discipline. swMATH is firmly integrated with zbMATH Open, the leading portal for the mathematics community. When a new article presenting a mathematical software is referenced in zbMATH, swMATH indexes, registers, and publicly exposes the metadata describing the software [1].

However, software life is not a walk in the park. An unavailable homepage, source code link rotting, loss in quality of the information contained in the metadata, etc., make software information integrity a challenge in the long run.

Software Heritage’s mission is to ensure software sustainability to answer this challenge. Launched in 2016, since then Software Heritage has become the universal source code library and built a set of API endpoints to make software source code archiving accessible to anyone.

The Software Heritage infrastructure allows for archiving any code and making this easy to achieve with forges like Github or Gitlab. Recently, Software Heritage has released the webhook plug-and-play feature. It can be easily installed and configured to archive every new release on a GitHub project (cf: Zenodo).

Moreover, archiving software source code and its different commits will provide you with the SWHID, the Software Hash Identifier, a reliable identifier ensuring your source code is unique and easily findable with a dedicated URL.

Since 2018, swMath and Software Heritage have collaborated to enhance software identification and accessibility. Providing input on Open Science outputs such as the Software Source Code Identification Use cases and identifier schemes for persistent software source code identification output [2] and the European Open Science Cloud Scholarly infrastructures for research software report [3].

Starting in June 2022, swMATH and Software Heritage have embarked on a partnership to establish mathematical software as reliable entities within the European Open Science Cloud. As a stakeholder of the Research Software APIs Connector, swMATH will connect with Software Heritage to ensure any mathematical software is:

• Archived: by preserving the source code and the swMATH metadata
•  Referenced: by exposing a reference with the SWHID on swMATH
•  Described: swMATH will archive metadata in Software Heritage
•  Credited: swMATH software citation will be machine-actionable by making metadata available in standard software vocabulary such as CodeMeta

With the partnership between Software Heritage and swMATH, the mathematical community gains access to an unprecedented resource that not only establishes connections between publications and software projects but also guarantees the preservation and accessibility to the knowledge embedded within software source code. Moreover, this collaboration opens doors to exploring new horizons, offering the potential to identify specific algorithms within source code files. This alliance marks a significant leap towards Open Science and research reproducibility, embodying the principles of transparency, accessibility, and collaborative advancement in the realm of mathematical research.

– Maxence Azzouz-Thuderoz & Shiraz Malla Mohamad, FIZ

Contributed by

Maxence Azzouz-Thuderoz is a Software Heritage ambassador. He is also a data scientist specialising in AI and natural language processing at FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute. Maxence’s main mission is to develop core components of the European Open Science Cloud.
To know more about Maxence, get in touch with him.

Shiraz Malla Mohamad is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at the Bergische University of Wuppertal. Shiraz is passionate about data integration and enjoys applying his skills to real problems in his student job at FIZ-Karlsruhe Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure.

References

1. Wolfgang Dalitz, Wolfram Sperber, Moritz Schubotz, Hagen Chrapary: alsoMATH – A Database for Mathematical Algorithms and Software. CICM Workshops 2019. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2634/LML2.pdf
2. Research Data Alliance/FORCE11 Software Source Code Identification WG, (2020). Software Source Code Identification Use cases and identifier schemes for persistent software source code identification (1.1). https://doi.org/10.15497/RDA00053
3. European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Scholarly infrastructures for research software : report from the EOSC Executive Board Working Group (WG) Architecture Task Force (TF) SIRS, Publications Office, 2020, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/28598