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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1686/WSSSPE4_paper_27.pdf
The Software Sustainability Institute Fellowship
Programme
Supporting the social side of research software
Shoaib Sufi
The Software Sustainability Institute
Manchester, UK
shoaib.sufi@software.ac.uk
Reproducibility, capability building, version control, testing, Three independent reviewers review fellow’s applications.
documentation, big data, data science, data management, expert A typical selection round will have around 15 places with 8
coding, the list goes on. However it is the social side of software applications for each place. We have a panel of 18 reviewers
sustainability that allows the increase of capabilities and practic- (11 of which are existing Fellows) each doing about 20 re-
es to permeate different research teams and domains thus sup-
views each during shortlisting. By the time Fellows applicants
porting the culture change required for better computational
research. In this paper we describe one of the mechanisms run by make the shortlist we are at around two candidates for each
the author, who is the Community Lead at the Software Sustain- place. The next stage is the selection day [4] where a group of
ability Institute, to help support the social side of research soft- around seven judges assess presentation and interaction skills
ware; the Institute's Fellowship programme. of the applicants.
Index Terms—fellowship, social, software sustainability, Once Fellows have been selected they are announced, add-
workshops, events, culture change. ed to mailing lists and they are given an entry on the Fellow's
profile pages [5]; at the time of writing the network of Fellows
I. INTRODUCTION
has grown to over 75 in number and includes a huge variety of
The aim of the Software Sustainability Institute [1] is to domains including but not limited to digital history, social sci-
help establish better research through superior software. This ence, remote sensing, epidemiology and high performance
can only be done by engaging with researchers, software de- computing.
velopers, funders, managers, publishers and other social actors Some of the successes of the Fellowship programme have
in the sphere of computational research. There are varying de- been organising events that help form new interdisciplinary
grees of engagement with those in the community; the strength working; e.g. bringing together statisticians and clinical re-
of the engagement often depends upon expectations and com- searchers [6] and paper hackathons in the life sciences [7]. Also
mitment of those who are engaging. Fellows have combined funds to run events, an example of this
For those with a stronger connection to their communities, was the Software Research Town Hall [8] at the Annual Geo-
to research software and to promoting such activities, the kin- physical Union (AGU) in 2013 which was put together by four
dred spirits of ‘better research, better software’ the Institute Fellows and one Institute staff member; the AGU attracts over
established the Fellowship programme to help create a network 25,000 attendees, whereas only a small portion would have
of like minded individuals who are committed to improve prac- attended the Town Hall, many more would have seen this in
tice in the domains they care so deeply about. the programme. Fellows have also been key in defining, or-
ganising and leading the space of Research Software Engineer-
II. THE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME
ing [9]; the current co-chairs are both Institute Fellows. In total
The Fellowship programme [2] offers a stipend of £3000 Fellows have attended or organised over 150 events and this
for successful fellows to use over 15 months for events and excludes their attendance at Institute workshops [10] in their
activities they planned in support of research software during inaugural year.
their Fellowship application. They are able to use this for all Fellows really appreciate the opportunities that the Fellow-
types of events such as attending conferences, catering for a ship has given them with a number of them commenting on
Software Carpentry Workshop [3], bringing in a guest speaker how it has allowed them to keep their posts, get new jobs,
for an event and organising their own workshops. make new collaborations and become the go-to person for im-
proved computational practice in their research groups. They
have also gained insights into improving the running of events.
It offers them the opportunities to build the skills to be ambas-
sadors to their research domains to improve the place of soft-
This work is licensed under a CC-BY-4.0 license ware in research and highlight the issues that need supporting.
III. CONCLUSION [3] Software Carpentry, http://software-carpentry.org, accessed
2016/08/11
In this paper we highlighted some of the facets and benefits
derived from supporting the research software community with [4] The Fellows 2016 selection day,
https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2015-11-06-fellows-2016-
the Fellowship Programme. What on the face of it seemed like selection-day-ssibattleroyale, accessed 2016/08/11
a simple grant mechanism has transformed into a supportive
[5] Fellows, http://www.software.ac.uk/fellows, accessed
network of research software specialists who understand the
2016/08/11
issues in research software and act as ambassadors for better
[6] ClinStat Workshop, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/clinstat, accessed
software practice to help bring about the culture change re-
2016/08/11
quired to establish ‘better software’ as the norm for ‘better re-
[7] Hackathons with a difference: writing collaborative papers,
search’.
https://www.software.ac.uk/blog/2014-08-05-hackathons-
ACKNOWLEDGMENT difference-writing-collaborative-papers, accessed 2016/08/11
[8] American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2013,
Shoaib Sufi was supported by the UK Engineering and https://www.software.ac.uk/american-geophysical-union-fall-
Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Grant meeting-2013-0 and
EP/H043160/1 and EPSRC, BBSRC and ESRC Grant https://fallmeeting.agu.org/2013/events/th42c-software-and-
EP/N006410/1 for the UK Software Sustainability Institute. research-town-hall/, accessed 2016/08/11
[9] Who’s behind the community?,
REFERENCES http://www.rse.ac.uk/supporters.html, accessed 2016/08/11
[1] About, https://www.software.ac.uk/about, accessed 2016/08/11 [10] Workshops, https://www.software.ac.uk/community/workshops,
[2] Fellowship Programme, https://www.software.ac.uk/fellowship- accessed 2016/08/11
programme, accessed 2016/08/11