Research Software Sharing, Publication, & Distribution Checklists

Is your software ready to share? These checklists aim to provide a structured aid for improving how you share code that is a part of your research output, be it one-off scripts or a more complex project. There are different checklists for different output types. They provided as simple text files that you can add to your project so that you can track progress as you make it and include advice about how to tick off the items on the lists. Each item on the list is also tiered with a simple and attainable thing to do and more demanding options. The lists cover these common themes: 📒 Source control, © Licensing, 📖 Documentation, 🔗 Making Citable, ✅ Testing, 🤖 Automation, 👥 Peer review / Code Review, 📦 Distribution, 💽 Environment Management / Portability, 🌱 Energy Efficiency, and ⚖ Governance, Conduct, and Continuity. There are repo badges that you can display on your project for completing a self-assessment or receiving an outside review. The project is a work in progress and I am seeking collaborators with expertise to contribute.

Presenter

• Dr. Richard J. Acton (Babraham Institute)

Presenter bio

Dr. Richard J. Acton’s background is in biology, his degrees are in biochemistry & genetics, and bioinformatics & systems biology. He developed an interest in reproducible computation whilst working with the HPC cluster to perform analyses for his PhD work in the epigenetics of aging. He has worked as a post-doctoral researcher and core bioinformatician and currently works as a research data outputs manager for a large developmental biology research consortium. The project that he’ll be talking about came out of developing resources for researchers in this consortium for what to think about when they share their code.