HELIOS Open Members Co-Author Research Software Policy Recommendations to Federal Agencies
A cohort of HELIOS Open member representatives have joined with other open source experts to author a PLOS Biology perspective, "Policy recommendations to ensure that research software is openly accessible and reusable". The piece provides policymaking guidance to federal agencies on leveraging research software to maximize research equity, transparency, and reproducibility. It makes the affirmative case that to accurately be able to replicate and reproduce results and build on shared data, we must not only have access to the data themselves, but also understand exactly how they were used and analyzed. To this end, federal agencies in the midst of developing their responses to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum on “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research” can and should ensure that research software is elevated as a core component of the scientific endeavor.
The perspective outlines seven policy recommendations, encompassing how research software should be shared, curated, maintained, secured, and redistributed. HELIOS Open thanks all of the co-authors for their contributions to this piece: Lorena Barba (George Washington University), Philip Bourne (University of Virginia), Caitlin Carter (ORFG), Zach Chandler (Stanford University), Sayeed Choudhury (Carnegie Mellon University), Stephen Jacobs (Rochester Institute of Technology), Daniel S. Katz (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign), Stephanie Lieggi (University of California Santa Cruz), Erin McKiernan (ORFG), Beth Plale (Indiana University, Research Data Alliance - US), Greg Tananbaum (ORFG).
