Building the international research software engineering community

^{Image shows some of the EVERSE team at deRSE25.}

EVERSE's engagement at deRSE25 included three main contributions: an introduction to EVERSE's RSQkit, a skill-up session on research software lifecycles, and a project poster.

RSQkit session

RSQkit is a knowledge hub for research software quality expertise developed within the EVERSE project. Guido Jukeland and I organised and introduced the session which introduced RSQkit ; Carlos Martinez, Aleksandra Nenadic and Shoaib Sufi offered remote support, while Elena Breitmoser, Neil Chue Hong, Faruk Diblen and Graeme Stewart were offered on-site support. 

This approach worked well, with over 30 participants engaging with the platform. The session demonstrated contribution workflows, resulting in several new contributions that are now under review by the editorial board. Neil Chue Hong organised an impromptu breakout to help attendees who were unsure about how to contribute, while Graeme Stewart ran a small breakout focusing on Julia resources. This collaborative approach ensured everyone could participate regardless of their experience level.

The two-hour interactive workshop generated feedback on improving the RSQkit, a knowledge hub for research software quality expertise developed within the EVERSE project. Participants identified areas for enhancement, including lowering the barrier to entry for everyday researchers, providing clearer introductions on the homepage, and creating better entry points based on user experience levels. They also suggested organising content around questions that users might ask, such as "I want to find a tool for..." to make navigation more intuitive.

Workshop participants created numerous GitHub issues covering documentation improvements, content organisation, and suggestions for new tools and resources to add. These included tutorials and cheat cheatsheets, pages for continuous integration, containerisation tools, and FORTRAN-specific resources. Discussions also centred on better defining user personas and roles, with participants suggesting different tracks for different types of users and clearer indications of expertise level for each resource.

The RSQkit was referenced in the first keynote speech, elevating its potential as a resource within the RSE community. This recognition, despite its work-in-progress status, shows the community's interest in such resources.

Research software lifecycles

Our skill-up session on research software lifecycles was well-attended, with more than 20 participants. I presented the first part on metadata for research software, with a focus on CFF and CodeMeta. This was followed by an in-depth look at FAIR assessment presented by Elena Breitmoser and Faruk Diblen who presented the FAIR4RS Principles (FAIR for Research Software), explaining how these principles provide non-normative guidance that helps facilitate provenance and proper credit attribution. 

They outlined the metrics for automated FAIR software assessment developed through the FAIR-IMPACT project, demonstrating three complementary tools: 

• CFFinit, which helps developers create citation files

• F-UJI, which is an extension of the automated FAIR-assessment tool for ded from data to assessment to support research software based on the FAIR4RS principles

• howfairis, which checks a repository's compliance with the five recommendations from fair-software.eu. 

deRSE25 success

The conference showed recognition of EVERSE across the German RSE community, suggesting our previous outreach efforts have been effective. The RSQkit was referenced in the first keynote speech, elevating its potential as a resource within the RSE community. This recognition, despite its work-in-progress status, shows the community's interest in such resources.

Beyond our specific sessions, the conference provided networking opportunities with the German RSE community, which is experiencing growth supported by new funding for community development. The co-location with a software engineering conference created connections between software engineering researchers and research software engineers. Relevant to EVERSE was also the discussion around the place of research software engineering in future versions of the Software Engineering Book of Knowledge "(SWEBOK)Swebook" project, with a position paper accepted for an upcoming summit in Ottawa as part of ICSE25 that will explore the place of research software in software engineering education.

The experience at deRSE25 has reinforced the value of our community-building efforts and provided lessons for future engagement. The positive reception of the RSQkit demonstrates the community's need for practical resources that address challenges in research software engineering. As we continue to develop these resources and relationships through EVERSE, we'll focus on simplifying contribution workflows and creating more accessible materials for the diverse experience levels we encountered at the conference.

The EVERSE consortium

EVERSE (European Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence) is a European project working to create a framework for research software and code excellence. The consortium is led by the Ethniko Kentro Erevnas Kai Technologikis Anaptyxis (CERTH) in Thessaloniki, Greece, and includes universities and research institutions from across Europe. EPCC is a partner, with the Software Sustainability Institute as the involved group. The EVERSE consortium encompasses five EOSC Science Clusters: ENVRI-FAIR (earth and environmental sciences), ESCAPE (high energy particle physics and astronomy), PANOSC (photon and neutron science), SSHOC (social sciences & humanities), and EOSC-Life (life sciences). 

The EVERSE project started in March 2024 and will run until February 2027.  

EVERSE website: https://everse.software