Photo by: andibreit

Author: Ben van Werkhoven, Netherlands eScience Center, NL-RSE

The 2021 RSE survey is out!

Keeping up with the phenomenal growth of the Research Software Engineer (RSE) community is far from easy, so we run an international survey every two to three years across all the national RSE associations and publish the results as an open, anonymised dataset. The survey provides insight into the community and how best to support it, so it is of incredible value to RSEs, policymakers and funders.

The purpose of this survey is to collect information about people who develop the software that is used in research. We call these people Research Software Engineers (RSEs), but they exist under many job titles (postdoctoral researcher, software developer, applications’ consultant, bioinformatician, etc.).

The last survey took place in 2018 and collected responses from 985 people from around the world. With all of the national associations reporting growth, and a number of new countries joining the community, we expect even more responses this year. This will provide an unrivalled overview of the RSE community. You can read here about what we learned from the survey conducted in the Netherlands in 2018.

The data collected by this survey will be used to help build the case for RSEs with universities, funders and other research organisations to develop policies that recognise the fundamental role played by the people who write software in research. This means there is a significant benefit to the community of Research Software Engineers.

Thank you for supporting the Research Software Engineering community by answering the survey!

Click here to answer the survey!