Episode 218: Karthik Ram & James Howison on Research Software Visibility Infrastructure Priorities

Guests Karthik Ram | James Howison Panelist Richard Littauer Show
Notes In this captivating episode of Sustain, host Richard welcomes
returning guest, Karthik Ram, Senior Research Scientist at the
Berkeley Institute for Data Science, and his colleague James
Howison, an Associate Professor from the School of Information at
the University of Texas, Austin. Today, they delve into their
recent research report, “‘Research Software Visibility
Infrastructure Priorities,” commissioned for the Australian
Research Data Commons. They discuss their eight key recommendations
about sustaining open source for the long haul, including ways to
recognize software contribution, implement web analytics, and offer
low friction ways for researchers to link software. Karthik and
James also touch on the future of software citations in academic
recognition systems, and the importance of universities valuing
diverse academic outputs. Don’t miss this fascinating conversation!
Press download now! [00:01:36] Richard brings up a paper written by
Karthik and James. Karthik explains the report titled, “Research
Software Visibility Infrastructure Priorities,” produced for the
Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). He describes the process
of creating the report and the report’s relevance beyond Australia.
[00:06:24] Richard asks how this is related to open source, and
James relates the recommendations, focusing on citing software in
publications and creating software bill of materials for research
papers. [00:08:02] James and Karthik discuss recommendations,
focusing on citing software in publications and creating software
bill of materials for research papers. [00:12:02] Richard endorses
the use of SBOMs for citing all software used in research, aiming
to counter the issue of only popular projects getting noticed, but
he questions how SBOMs account for the varying importance of
different software dependencies. Karthik clarifies the SBOMs are
not meant to create equal value citations for all software but to
understand the scientific infrastructure that supports research.
[00:15:28] Richard suggests that SBOMs could be useful in
industrial contexts for security purposes and infrastructure
visibility. Karthik agrees, stating that SBOMs have a broader
application and were originally created for security reasons to
track vulnerabilities. [00:17:41] James introduces the third
recommendation to create software use infrascope as an observatory
based on software mentions publications. He discusses the challenge
of identifying software mentions in publications and the work done
towards building comprehensive view of software in academia.
[00:22:34] Karthik introduces the fourth recommendation to create
detailed use cases for research tools aimed at different skill
levels, addressing the challenge researchers face when selecting
software tools. [00:24:29] Richard highlights the necessity of
allocating time in research planning for writing documentation and
tutorials, which James agrees is crucial for making software tools
more accessible to researchers. [00:26:30] James discusses the
fifth recommendation, which is to support existing technology for
software archiving, such as Zenodo or Software Heritage, rather
than creating new repositories at the institutional level.
[00:28:28] Karthik talks about sixth recommendation and supporting
communities of practice like hackathons and other collaborative
spaces, which have shown to have a positive impact on research
productivity. James describes the need for third spaces that are
neither too local nor too public. Where researchers can comfortably
ask questions and share insights within a focused community.
[00:31:08] James introduces the seventh recommendation which is
about implementing web analytics to gain insights into software
usage, as citations alone do not reflect the full impact of
research software. [00:33:48] James acknowledges the need for
infrastructure to enhance insight from SBOMs and mentions the
necessity of funding to maintain services that provide such data.
[00:35:53] Richard highlights the eighth recommendation, which
suggests providing an easy way for researchers to link to software
alongside data submissions. James directs listeners to the Softcite
GitHub organization and mentions the upcoming blog post about their
report on the URSSI Blog. [00:36:16] Karthik and James tell us
where you can find out more about their work and find them on the
web. Quotes [00:08:40] “Absolutely every piece of software that you
use in your whole stack should be cited, but I’ve had some issues
with that in publications.” [00:09:04] “What we identified was that
different fields have different norms for what rises to the level
of contribution for actually being mentioned formally in the
publication.” [00:14:40] “The researchers are experts in scientific
explanation and they’re going to pick packages to mention that
pertain to understanding the research that’s done in the paper,
whereas the SBOM is going to give us insight into the software
infrastructure that made the research possible.” Spotlight
[00:38:26] Richard’s spotlight is iNaturalist. [00:39:00] Karthik’s
spotlight is Kyle Niemeyer at Oregon State. [00:39:34] James’s
spotlight is Eva Brown and her Council Data Project. Links
SustainOSS (https://sustainoss.org/) SustainOSS Twitter
(https://twitter.com/SustainOSS?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
SustainOSS Discourse (https://discourse.sustainoss.org/)
podcast@sustainoss.org (mailto:podcast@sustainoss.org) SustainOSS
Mastodon (https://mastodon.social/tags/sustainoss) Open
Collective-SustainOSS (Contribute)
(https://opencollective.com/sustainoss) Richard Littauer Mastodon
(https://mastodon.social/@richlitt) Karthik Ram Website
(https://ram.berkeley.edu/) Karthik Ram LinkedIn
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthik-ram-93334954/) Karthik Ram
X/Twitter (https://twitter.com/_inundata) James Howison X/Twitter
(https://twitter.com/jameshowison) James Howison-University of
Texas, Austin
(https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/people/people-details?PersonID=175)
Research Software Visibility Infrastructure Priorities Report by
Dr. Karthik Ram and Dr. James Howison (Zenodo)
(https://zenodo.org/records/10060255) Sustain Podcast-2 Episodes
featuring Daniel Stenburg
(https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/stenberg) Sustain
Podcast-Episode 187: Karthik Ram on Research Software
Sustainability (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/guests/ram) Depsy
(http://depsy.org/) Softcite dataset
(https://github.com/howisonlab/softcite-dataset) Softcite software
mention recognition service
(https://github.com/softcite/software-mentions) Softcite-GitHub
(https://github.com/softcite/) SoMeSci-Software Mentions in Science
(https://data.gesis.org/somesci/) Mapping the Impact of Research
Software in Science
(https://github.com/chanzuckerberg/software-impact-hackathon-2023)
The Scientific Community Image Forum (Frequently Asked Questions)
(https://forum.image.sc/t/frequently-asked-questions/18729)
HackyHour (https://hackyhour.github.io/) Sustain Podcast-Episode
95: Marko Saric of Plausible Analytics, the most popular Open
Source analytics platform (https://podcast.sustainoss.org/95) URSSI
Blog (https://urssi.us/blog/) Ecosyste.ms (https://ecosyste.ms/)
Incentives and integration in scientific software production by
James Howison and James D. Herbsleb
(https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2441776.2441828) Python Package
Citation Generator-GitHub
(https://github.com/RichardLitt/dependency-cite) iNaturalist
(https://www.inaturalist.org/) Kyle Niemeyer
(https://engineering.oregonstate.edu/people/kyle-niemeyer) Eva
Brown GitHub (https://evamaxfield.github.io/) Council Data Project
(https://councildataproject.org/) Credits Produced by Richard
Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr at
Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by
DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Special Guests: James Howison and Karthik Ram.