Should research software be free?
November 9, 2022 | 13:15 - 17:30 | SURF meetingroom 3.5, Utrecht
In this meetup we explore the openness of research software:
- Is it better for our community to aim for open software?
- How can it impact your career to release your own software
- Is it possible to release your research codes? How?
We have a full programme with many interesting talks and discussion opportunities
| Time | Speaker | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 13:20 - 13:35 | Reinder Radersma (NWO) | Welcome |
| 13:35 - 14:00 | Lourens Veen (NLeSC) | We need Open Source in Science |
| 14:00 - 14:30 | Jo Evershed (Gorilla) | Making the Most of Industry Partnerships |
| 14:30 - 14:50 | Coffee break | |
| 14:50 - 15:20 | Niels Reijner & Allison McDonald (AUMC-VUmc) | Starting an Open Science workgroup & using open-source software as early career researchers |
| 15:20 - 15:50 | André Offringa (Astron) | Experiences from our Open Source committee |
| 15:50 - 16:15 | Discussion Roundtable | |
| 16:15 - 17:30 | Drinks! |
If you have any questions, please contact Daan van Vugt
Abstracts
Jo Evershed: "Making the Most of Industry Partnerships"
"Give ordinary people the right tools, and they will design and build the most extraordinary things." Neil Gershenfeld.
With more closed-source software embracing Open Science, it's time to change the relationship between Research Software Companies and in-house Research Software Engineers. Join Jo Evershed to discover how Gorilla is supporting Open Science, and empowering RSEs to support behavioural scientists.
Lourens Veen: "We need Open Source in Science"
Our planet's climate is changing, biodiversity is in decline, viruses roam the Earth, fresh water is getting scarce and so is fertile soil and many minerals. Political tensions are running high. Perhaps never before have we had such a need for scientific answers to the world's problems. Science and technology have enabled our current standard of living, and we will have to work hard and work efficiently to maintain it. Unfortunately, science itself has some challenges. Reproducibility is one of them, waste of resources due to lack of sustainability of tools and methodology another. Open sourcing all of our scientific software will greatly improve quality, reproducibility, and collaboration. It will allow us to truly stand on the shoulders of giants, to start building the next step of that great human pyramid from the top rather than from halfway down, and to make it sturdier than ever before. Open Source and open collaboration will greatly accelerate the pace of innovation, allowing us to face the many aspects of the current global crisis. So what are we waiting for? Open Source everything!
André Offringa: "Experiences from the Astron Open Source committee"
ASTRON has recently published version 2.0 of their Open Source Policy. In this talk we tell what the policy means and give some insights in the lessons learned from the updating process.
Niels Reijner & Allison McDonald: "Starting an Open Science workgroup & using open-source software as early career researchers"
In 2021, a group of young researchers and educators created the Open Science Working Group at the Amsterdam UMC’s Anatomy & Neurosciences (ANW) department. Our goal is to promote the use of OS practices and provide OS resources within our own and other research departments. We will share our early experiences using a bottom-up approach to stimulate the use of OS practices. Furthermore, we will share our perspectives on open-source software, which is a fundamental aspect of the research efforts within our department.
Speakers
Reinder Radersma
Reinder is coordinator of the NWO-I Digital Competence Center; the center of expertise for open and reproducible data and software management at the NWO institutes. Before he worked for 12 years as a researcher in evolutionary biology in the Netherlands, UK and Sweden focusing on data intensive projects such as social network analyses and statistical genetics.
Lourens Veen
Lourens is a Senior RSE at the Netherlands eScience Center, where he has worked since 2016. He has been programming since he was ten years old, professionally since 2007. In 1999, he discovered Free Software when he got a copy of SuSE Linux 6.1, and he hasn't looked back. He is the author of several Open Source packages, lead designer of the Dutch National Database of Flora and Fauna, and was involved with the Open Graphics Project and the Open Hardware Foundation. Lourens' scientific background is in computer science, biogeography and modelling and simulation.
Jo Evershed
Jo is the co-founder of Cauldron Science and creator of the Gorilla Experiment Builder. Her ultimate ambition is to help behavioral scientists liberate their work from the lab and accelerate the creation of evidence-tested behavioral interventions.
André Offringa
André is an associate staff scientist at Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) since 2014, and has a position of "Universitair Docent" (assistant professor) at the University of Groningen.
Niels Reijner
Niels is a PhD student in the department of Anatomy and Neurosciences at Amsterdam UMC, investigating the pathological sensitivity of MRI biomarkers in Alzheimer's Disease.
Allison McDonald
Allison is a PhD candidate in the Behavioural & Translational Neuroscience group, in the Anatomy and NeuroSciences department at Amsterdam UMC, investigating the neural circuits underlying compulsive alcohol use.
NL-RSE. The community of Research Software Engineers from Dutch universities, knowledge institutes, companies and other relevant organizations for sharing knowledge, organizing meetings and raising awareness for the scientific recognition of research software.