Research Software Engineering Inside and Outside the Library
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The importance of software to research is growing, which is reflected in the emergence of the Research Software Engineer (RSE) role and moves to recognise software as a research output. The Research Computing team at the University of St Andrews sits within the Digital Research division of the Library and seeks to support research in two principal ways. Firstly, the team are available as a development resource to researchers across the University; secondly, they are leading initiatives to understand and support better the breadth and depth of research software engineering activities across the University.
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Research Software Engineering Inside and Outside the Library
- 1. Research Software Engineering Inside and Outside the Library Patrick McCann Applications Developer (Research Computing) RLUK Conference 2017
- 2. Research Software Engineering Inside and Outside the Library •Introduction of the Research Computing team at St Andrews •Working as RSEs from inside the Library •Supporting RSEs outside the Library
- 3. Research Computing at St Andrews • Started over 10 years ago as a service providing support for Arts and Humanities projects • 2012 – renamed Research Computing and remit widened to all researchers • 2015 – moved from IT Services to the new Digital Research division of the Library
- 4. Research Computing at St Andrews •3 Applications Developers (2.5 FTE)
- 5. Research Computing at St Andrews •3 Applications Developers Research Software Engineers (2.5 FTE) •Reporting to Senior Librarian (Digital Humanities and Research Computing)
- 6. Digital Research Division •Open Access •Research Data Management •Research Systems •Digital Humanities •Research Computing
- 7. Research Computing •Supports research in two principal ways •As a development resource available to researchers across the University •By supporting research software engineering across the University
- 8. Research Computing •Supports research in two principal ways •As a development resource available to researchers across the University •By supporting research software engineering across the University
- 9. RSEs Inside the Library •Assistance with funding applications •Advice on appropriate technologies, working within the St Andrews IT context •Specifying software development to be carried out during the project • Team members costed into applications
- 10. RSEs Inside the Library •Project Websites •The most common type of support provided •Own hosting platform
- 11. RSEs Inside the Library •Repositories •Islandora •Image Database
- 12. RSEs Inside the Library •Custom applications •Databases •TEI encoding •Document Indexes •Web Applications
- 13. Publishing the Philosophical Transactions •PI: Dr. Aileen Fyfe, School of History •AHRC project investigating scholarly publishing over the 350 year history of the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society
- 14. Publishing the Philosophical Transactions • Virtual Registry of Papers • Database populated initially with details (inc. DOIs!) of all published articles • Researchers expanding on these with details of publication process from Royal Society records • Also adding records for unpublished papers • Key Fact Generator • Dynamically generated datasheet for specified year • Overview • Editorial and management details • Print/circulation details • Financial details • Will be available via website
- 15. The Islamisation of Anatolia • PI: Dr. Andrew Peacock, School of History • An ERC-funded examination of the formation of Anatolian Islamic society through extensive but largely unstudied literary evidence • Research Computing have helped construct a searchable index of that evidence
- 16. Arab Cultural Semantics in Transition • PI: Dr. Kirill Dmitriev, School of Modern Languages • An ERC-funded project to explore the pivotal role of language consciousness in the history of Arab culture • Research Computing are developing an Analytical Database of Arabic Poetry
- 17. RSEs Inside the Library • This work has been the core function of the team since before moving to the Library • Enabling researchers to identify and address new questions • Research data management • Facilitating collaboration and dissemination of research • The relationship with academics has developed • Providing a service → working in partnership
- 18. RSEs Inside the Library • Library Applications for Digital Humanities • Digital Collections • Biographical Register • Transcription Platform
- 19. Research Computing •Supports research in two principal ways •As a development resource available to researchers across the University •By supporting research software engineering across the University
- 20. Research Computing •Supports research in two principal ways •As a development resource available to researchers across the University •By supporting research software engineering across the University
- 21. RSEs Outside the Library •We aren’t the only RSEs at the University •Who are the others? •What are they doing? •How are they doing it? •What support do they need?
- 22. RSEs Outside St Andrews • Software Sustainability Institute • [Supporting] the UK’s research software community - a community that includes the majority of UK’s researchers. • software.ac.uk • @SoftwareSaved http://software.ac.uk/attach/Flyer.pdf
- 23. RSEs Outside St Andrews • Research Software Engineers Association • Influencing academia to recognise the fundamental role that software plays in today’s research. • rse.ac.uk • @ResearchSoftEng http://rse.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/cropped-UKRSE_website_logo.png
- 24. RSEs Outside St Andrews •Software Carpentry •Teaching basic lab skills for research computing •software-carpentry.org •@swcarpentry https://zenodo.org/api/files/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/swcarpentry/logo.png
- 25. RSEs Outside the Library • February 2016: Blogpost: Do you write software for research? • ~300 views • ~50 responses • March 2016: Mailing list • ~75 subscribers https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Prog-languages.png
- 26. RSEs Outside the Library • June 2016: Research Computing Network launch event • ~30 people • Issues raised: • Availability of appropriate version control systems • Training, especially for PGRs and early career researchers
- 27. RSEs Outside the Library • In July 2016, the Library conducted a survey of research data management practices • Sent to 2000 research staff and students • 300 responses covering every School
- 28. RSEs Outside the Library •Do you write, develop or maintain programs, scripts or other code as part of your research? Yes: 124 (41% of 299 respondents)
- 29. RSEs Outside the Library •Do you use a code repository or version control software (e.g. Git, Mercurial, Subversion) to manage your code? Yes: 35 (28% of 124 developers)
- 30. RSEs Outside the Library • Follow-up survey •Nov/Dec 2016 •Sent to ~100 people • From previous survey and mailing list •29 responses
- 31. RSEs Outside the Library • Version Control: • GitHub.com is good enough for most people most of the time… • But there are some requirements around access control and data security which could only be met by an institutional system • Working on project proposal to put such a system in place https://dwa5x7aod66zk.cloudfront.net/assets/labtocat-be5eee0434960a8f73e54910df8e87b8a5a3b2d651c0b301670c04a9cc26a70f.png
- 32. RSEs Outside the Library • Training • 45% of respondents were “self- taught/learned on the job” • All but 1 respondent interested in one or more Software Carpentry lessons for themselves or their PGRs • Working with CAPOD, our Professional Development service • 2 workshops this semester • More to be offered on ongoing basis https://zenodo.org/api/files/00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000/swcarpentry/logo.png
- 33. RSEs Outside the Library • Developing guidance on good practice for RSEs in order to • Make software better • Make research more reproducible • Demonstrate impact • Save effort • Developing openly on GitHub: • https://github.com/StAResComp/sta-rse-guidance
- 34. RSEs Outside the Library • None of this was part of our service before moving to the Library • Fits on a continuum of Open Research support: • OA → RDM → RSE • Complements the support provided by the Digital Humanities service
- 35. Research Software Engineering Inside and Outside the Library •RSEs in the Library working with academics to develop the solutions they need •The Library supporting RSEs across the University so they can develop their own solutions
Editor's Notes
- I joined the team in 2014
- We are, at this point in time, officially "Applications Developers"; however, Research Software Engineer is emerging as the standard way to describe those who contribute to research by developing software, wherever they are located.
- The Islandora software stack is built around the Fedora repository software and the Drupal content management system; we maintain a multisite set-up allowing multiple sites to draw on a single Fedora repository. The Image Database system was developed in-house and has been running for over 10 years. Works and images are described using the Visual Resource Association metadata schema. The system is used in teaching and to support a number of research projects.
- We work with researchers on a number of projects to develop bespoke applications to meet their needs, using a wide range of technologies. I'll quickly run through some examples on the next few slides.
- 2013-2017
- Research Computing developed and maintained the database and the interfaces for it. We also have helped to augment the data with information from other sources. 2013-2017
- Screenshots of search results and individual record 2012-2016
- Screenshots - select a root and you are shown lemmata; select one to see a sense, which you can then view in context. 2013-2017
- To me, these functions fit well within the Library Have always been seeking to work more in partnership. We maintain close links with IT Services.
- Another thing we've been doing since before the move is developing and supporting applications for Digital Humanities within the Library Digital Collections uses Islandora to make available material from Special Collections which is unique to or of particular relevance to St Andrews. The Biographical Register holds details of St Andrews alumni, officers and graduates between 1747 and 1897, drawn from a number of sources in Special Collections. The Transcription Platform has been set up to facilitate the transcription of material from Special Collections, potentially in a crowd-sourced manner.
- This isn’t a radical insight generally, but little awareness of these things centrally at St Andrews. First, lets look beyond the University and some of the external initiatives in this area.
- A national facility for cultivating and improving research software to support world-class research Based at the Universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford and Southampton, funded by EPSRC, ESRC, BBSRC and Jisc Leading international authority on software sustainability – important for reproducible research
- An association working to create a community and raise awareness of the UK’s Research Software Engineers
- Since 1998, Software Carpentry has been teaching researchers the computing skills they need to get more done in less time and with less pain. US-based non-profit.
- Biggest responses: Chemistry, Biology, Physics, Medicine, Mathematics
- Interesting in and of itself, but also a proxy for whether or not developers are working in a sustainable manner. Almost all developers from CS used version control, and half of those in Physics. Big drop-off elsewhere..
- If we want people to follow good practice, we need to facilitate it
- Alex Konovalov in Computer Science is a certified Software Carpentry Instructor and has been extremely helpful. Have also looked at Data Carpentry and Library Carpentry
- Also getting out and talking to researchers
- Some ad-hoc one-to-one support previously