Do you adore software? Let your funders know!
1 May 2023
Software plays a crucial role in research, and the need to sustain it, and to invest in the people who develop and maintain it, has become increasingly apparent.
Research software sustainability is vitally important for the reproducibility of research outcomes and has a direct bearing on the process of research, including the efficient use of financial and human resources.
The aim of the Amsterdam Declaration on Funding Research Software Sustainability (ADORE.software) is to raise awareness of the role of funding practice in the sustainability of research software, and to improve that practice, similar to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).
Funders play a crucial role in ensuring software sustainability by structurally supporting it. Over the past few years, a variety of methods for sustaining research software have been explored, including improving and extending funding policies and instruments. The Software Sustainability Institute, led by EPCC, has been at the forefront of initiatives to improve research software policy and practice, as a founding member of the Research Software Alliance.
During the International Funders Workshop: The Future of Research Software held on 8-9 November 2022 in Amsterdam, funding organisations joined forces to explore how to effectively contribute to making research software sustainable. This has resulted in the Amsterdam Declaration on Funding Research Software Sustainability, a short set of recommendations for funders of research software that covers practice, ecosystems, personnel and ethics.
The draft declaration is now open for feedback from funders, and the wider community will be invited to comment later this year. Please encourage your funders to look at signing an expression of interest in endorsing the declaration (you can see who’s signed up so far) and subscribe to the newsletter to receive updates on the process and alerts on when the community feedback period starts.
