A state of the art, by the Software and Sources Codes College of the Committee for Open Science

Launched in 2022, the Software and Sources Codes college of the Committee for Open Science works on the ambitions of the National Plan for Open Science regarding software. The development of a catalogue of software created  by public research is one of the objectives described in the third axis of the Plan: “a catalogue of these products will be produced and made widely accessible”.

With the aim of setting up a catalogue that meets the needs of scientific communities in France, the college has carried out an overview on the subject of software catalogues.

An overview of the current situation to understand the context and the needs 

Currently, it is difficult to identify all the  academic software production, even at the level of a single institution. Unlike other academic products, software is often more complex to identify: there is no standardized referencing process. Added to this, when software is open – which is not always the case -, it may be distributed in a variety of ways: through its repository via a forge or a dedicated or a general website.In recent years, at the national and international levels, software has come under increasing scrutiny in the research community. 

This has led to a profusion of activities and tools on the subject. While this gradual recognition of software as an academic achievement is a positive evolution, the diversity of initiatives and actions should not lead to a dispersion of energies. The challenge is to offer end-users a set of high-performance services integrated into their daily workflows.

The report provides an overview of the current state of the art of software catalogues. The approach is global, covering the practices of scientific communities, associated infrastructures, as well as metadata schemas and existing catalogues. The report also considers what is already on offer in terms of support.

In order to provide the initial elements required for the construction of a catalogue of software for higher education and research, a national survey has been carried out and it is presented in this report. On the basis of the results of this survey, the report proposes an analysis of a  selection of national and international initiatives and infrastructures.

Since the first software catalogues were released, the ecosystem has expanded considerably enriched and diversified. The report takes this dimension into account. On the one hand, this report allows us to understand how formats and infrastructures can work together to automate processes as far as possible. On the other hand, it  highlights the need to include the issue of support from the early stages of the work. Many different stakeholders are involved: software authors, as well as research support staff.

State of the art and perspectives 

This report constitutes a preliminary basis for the proposal of technical, organizational and governance recommendations concerning a future national catalogue of research software.

The elements presented in this report form the basis for the architecture of the future catalogue. A first prototype is currently under construction. HAL and Software Heritage are infrastructures that will play a key role. Use cases have been defined, supplemented by contributions from a wide-ranging call to the community.

A second document, describing all the technical processes, workflows and functional organization, is currently being finalized.

For any request for additional information, as well as to send comments on the published report, please contact directly the members of the college working group on the subject: 

Sabrina Granger (sabrina.granger@inria.fr) et Violaine Louvet (violaine.louvet@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr)

For further information: : 

• The report (in French): Vers un catalogue des logiciels de la recherche