Request for Review: ESIP's Software Guidelines
This post originally appeared on the Software Carpentry website.
ESIP (the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners) has been developing research code/software guidelines for the earth observation and geosciences communities, and would appreciate feedback on the current draft before the end of October. If you have suggestions or feedback for:
- Interoperability
- Jupyter notebooks as code or documentation
- The proposed progression model
- Sustainability or adoption/reuse
please chime in. (Look in the right margin of the browser page for the hypothes.is controls that will let you add and view comments.) As a taste of what they’re doing, here’s a table of their stakeholders’ user cases and desired outcomes:
| Stakeholder | Use Case | Desired Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Funder | As a funding agency, we're interested in evaluating the software projects we fund. | A functional evaluation system based on accepted metrics. |
| Project Manager, Principal Investigator (manager in practice) | As a manager, I'm interested in using the rubric/progression as a learning tool to help improve the development practices in my research group. | A checklist or other informal assessment to help the research group meet funder's expectations and to determine the next steps for training or related activities in the research group. |
| Principal Investigator | As a PI, I would like a tool to assess our progress and to ensure we're meeting our funder's expectations for a software project based on the readiness level stated in the original proposal and as defined by the funder. | A checklist or other informal assessment to help the research group meet funder's expectations, and to determine the next steps for training or related activities in the research group. This informal assessment would also provide aid for formal reviews. |
| Science Software Developer, Researcher who codes | As a science software developer, I'm interested in using the recommended practices to improve my own workflow and skillsets. | A checklist or mentoring activity to help guide me towards training options to meet my research and skillset goals. | Developer | As a developer, I would like community-supported guidelines to support requests to change our current dev team practices. | A checklist or informal assessment to encourage my manager or PI to allow the development team to adopt appropriate practices. |
| Grad Student, Post-Doc, Researcher interested in continuing code education | I've taken the introductory courses and want to continue to improve my skills but don't know what steps to take next, and I'd like guidance based on my skillset. | A checklist or mentoring activity to help guide me towards training options to meet my research and skillset goals. |
| Research Community | We want to provide educational materials or other support for community members to meet their goals regarding research software implementation and career growth. | A set of guidelines for technology assessment, and the framework for using those guidelines as educational tools. |