The Software pillar of open science workshop, organised by the Software and Source Codes college of the French Committee for Open Science, took place at the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research on November 29th, 2023. The highlights from the workshop have now been published. The workshop convened high-level stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds, including researchers, research software engineers, research evaluation bodies, infrastructures, academic open source program offices (OSPOs), and financial backers, who shared their experience and views on research software.

Software has become essential in all areas of scientific research, both as a tool for research, a product of research, and a research object in itself. In the quest to make research results reproducible, and pass knowledge to future generations, three main pillars must be considered, strengthened and preserved: the research articles that describe the results, the data sets used or produced, and the software source code that embodies the logic of the data transformation.

The workshop featured three panel sessions, in which speakers focused on major dimensions of relevance to software in open science:

• Recognition and support for the dissemination of software, chaired by Mathieu Giraud (CNRS, University of Lille) and Violaine Louvet (CNRS, Grenoble Alpes University);
• Acknowledgement of software as a key pillar for reproducible research, chaired by Nicolas Rougier (Inria, University of Bordeaux);
• Highlighting of the social impact of software, chaired by Daniel Le Berre (University of Artois, CNRS).

For more information, the report of the workshop is available here: https://www.ouvrirlascience.fr/highlights-of-the-software-pillar-of-open-science-workshop-2/