What is Research Software?

Software is essential for most research and plays an important role at each stage of the research life cycle. Below are a few definitions, some you might find controversial.

“Software that is used to generate, process or analyse results that you intend to appear in a publication (either in a journal, conference paper, monograph, book or thesis). Research software can be anything from a few lines of code written by yourself, to a professionally developed software package."

(UK Research Software Survey 2014, Hettrick et al, https://zenodo.org/record/14809)

"Research Software includes source code files, algorithms, scripts, computational workflows and executables that were created during the research process or for a research purpose. Software Components (e.g operating sytems, libraries, dependencies, packages, scripts, etc) that are used for research but were not created during or with a clear research intent should be considered software in research and not Research Software. This differentiation may vary between disciplines." (Defining Research Software: a controversial discussion 2021, Gruenpeter et al, https://zenodo.org/records/5504016)

"In November 2022, the Research Software Alliance (ReSA) and the Netherlands eScience Center organized a two-day international workshop titled “The Future of Research Software.” Rob van Nieuwpoort gave a talk at the workshop where he tried to define the roles of research software.

Research Software is a component of our instruments.

Research Software is the instrument.

Research Software analyses research data.

Research Software presents research results.

Research Software integrates existing components to a working whole.

Research Software is infrastructure or an underlying tool.

Research Software facilitates distinctively research oriented collaborations."
(The full blog post.)