This repository is being maintained by Arielle Bennett, Senior Researcher in Open Source Practices at The Alan Turing Institute to track and share progress on her Software Sustainability Institute Fellowship project: "From open code to open contributions". This repository follows the recommendations and guidance provided in The Turing Way handbook.
- Vision: Improving the culture of open source contributions in academia
- Mission: Engaging researchers, RSEs, and other research technical professionals in considering culture change related to open source contributions in academia
Currently, open source plays a critical role in research software, and is mandated by some funding sources. However, these mandates vary widely in their clarity around exactly how they support open source and currently they are very focused on publishing code openly, rather than saupporting and recognising contributions to maintaining existing open source projects. There are several groups across academia that are already encouraging people to support this maintenance activity which is critical for many open source research tools. This project intends to start asking the question "How to encourage more researchers and RSEs towards actively contributing to open source projects?"
- Understand perceptions of, and barriers to, contributing to open source projects from researchers, RSEs and other research professionals
- Develop initial approach for improving contributions to open source
- Run pilot plan and evaluate results
- Share the process and results with the wider RSE community to help other organisations develop similar approaches
You can find up-to-date status of this project in the associated project here: [https://github.com/users/Arielle-Bennett/projects/2/views/2]((https://github.com/users/Arielle-Bennett/projects/2/views/2)
Below is the initial plan:
- Guidelines: Contribution Guidelines for contributors.
- Code of Conduct: Code of Conduct ensures a respectful project environment.
- Resource Plans: Details on available resources and recommended practices for the project team.
This work is licensed under the MIT license (code) and Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (for documentation). You are free to share and adapt the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you provide attribution (give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made) in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use and with no additional restrictions.
- Citation Instructions: How to cite the project.
- Acknowledgment: Recognising contributions by different members. This repository uses the template created and maintained by The Turing Way team members and shared under CC-BY 4.0 for reuse: https://github.com/alan-turing-institute/reproducible-project-template.
- Reach Out: If you'd like to chat more about this project, please contact ariellebennettlovell@gmail.com or find me on Bluesky @arielleb.bsky.social
Thanks goes to these wonderful people (emoji key):
This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind welcome!