Research is reliant on software and computational methods. Yet, software developed across different disciplines has only recently been discussed in terms of its intellectual contributions and its status as a scholarly research output. In contrast, data's profile has increased in academia due to research data management roles, Data Management Plans (DMPs), data curation protocols, and the FAIR principles and more generally due to discussions of "big data", data journalism, and data science. In comparison, software has lagged in terms of recognition, policy, and professional roles specifically aimed at software curation and preservation, both in and out of the library field. The source code behind software, however, can be viewed as an entry point—one necessary for making visible otherwise inaccessible information. This blog post discusses what (and who) is moving the conversation on the recognition of software as a form of knowledge production and highlights some interesting groups and organizations that are actively building communities of practice around software sustainability and preservation.

Defining Scholarly Ephemera

IASGE Team

2019-10-18

The IASGE project has been busy writing updates for our community, participating in webinars, and attending conferences. We have recently hit our six month mark on the project and have made some significant progress researching the ways in which source code produced by the scholarly community can be archived and preserved for future (re)use. In recent discussions about our project with colleagues, we have been careful to stress the importance of saving the contextual, scholarly ephemera associated with source code; not just the source code itself. But what exactly do we mean by "scholarly ephemera"? To answer this question, we wanted to take a minute to write out our definition, provide some explanations on why we are seeking to archive it as part of the scholarly record, and elaborate on why it is an important way to understand source code more fully.