January 2025
Happy New Year and welcome everyone to the JuRSE newsletter!
JuRSE (Jülich Research Software Engineering) is a grassroots community for all FZJ scientists and students who code and/or anyone interested in research software. (https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse)
The purpose of this newsletter is to update you about JuRSE community initiatives at FZJ and some of the national and international activities in Research Software Engineering.
Please feel free to forward this to any colleagues who may be interested in this topic and in joining the JuRSE Community.
Did you know that there as well as a RSE Rocketchat channel open to all FZJ staff (https://chat.fz-juelich.de/invite/krTNBT) you can also join the national RSE Community on matrix (https://matrix.to/#/#de-rse.org:matrix.org) hosted by the deRSE Association?
JuRSE news
NEW TRAINING COURSE FROM JURSE – REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!
‘How to Get Funding By Caring About Research Software’
Target audience: Research team leaders and postdocs who have leadership tasks.
More and more funders are recognizing the vital role of software in research. The many software publications at FZJ (see e.g. JuRSE Research Software Publication Monitor) show that this is a chance for us.
In this workshop, we will discuss how you can strategically leverage this to secure funding. Key topics include:
· Recent developments on the status of software in research and funding.
· Case studies and practical strategies for securing funding.
· Brainstorming project ideas.
This workshop is ideal for researchers and PIs aiming to position software as an asset in their funding strategy. More info: https://go.fzj.de/jurse_training
Reminder: Anaconda Update
We featured this in last year’s newsletter but we think this issue is going to affect many people who may not have seen this news yet so we’re bringing this up again here.
As some of you may have heard, Anaconda changed their Terms of Service (ToS) in 2020, insisting that “government entities and non-profit entities with over 200 employees or contractors” must pay. That includes FZJ, no matter how many use this service. Once a single person from FZJ uses their channel, FZJ would be obliged to pay. Find out more about this and the alternatives available in our updated article:https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/the_latest/the-anaconda-is-squeezing-us
Open Hours (every Wednesday - https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-open-hours)
All are welcome to come and talk to us about anything and this is an opportunity to learn from each other and expand our collective knowledge so everyone is welcome to join.
We are always happy to meet new RSEs at FZJ and to catch up with familiar faces. Last December, we held our final Open Hours discussions of the year, covering some topics on software publication, software license concerns, supporting RSE training events, and CI components for FZJ GitLabs. Some of the topics we discussed in previous sessions included Anaconda concerns, opportunities for PhD students to present their work, reproducible methods and tools for handling parameter studies of simulations, resources for scientific code development. We look forward to meeting more of this community!
JuRSE Code of the Month
The JuRSE Team want to shine a spotlight on the diverse and excellent research software that is being primarily developed at Forschungszentrum Jülich and to do this we’re showcasing one research software a month.
January’s Code of the Month is Score-P. This code provides insight into massively parallel HPC applications, their communication, synchronization, I/O, and scaling behaviour to pinpoint performance bottlenecks and their causes.
Click through to our website (https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/jurse-code-of-the-month/january-2025) to find out what the JuRSE team like about this software.
HiRSE News
The JuRSE team work closely with the HiRSE project so we include their news here too.https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/collaborations/hirse_ps
We’re kicking off the new year with a talk from Carlos Martinez Ortiz from the Netherlands eScience Center on ‘Software Management Plans: How do they lead to better research?’ on Thursday 23rd January at 11am CET.
More info: https://www.helmholtz-hirse.de/series/2025_01_23-seminar_38.html
Promoting research software: Made in Germany
We now have over 60 codes in this initiative. Check out the codes that are already taking part in this campaign: - https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/rse/community-initiatives/the-hirse-code-promotion
What is this initiative all about? Researchers, postdocs, and students at German universities and research centres write great research software. The HiRSE team wants to make that more visible by bringing your software to the attention of the RSE Community and beyond. We’re looking for research software created, extended and/or maintained by people working at German institutions to join our latest initiative. This is not meant exclusively, we of course welcome also software written by international teams, as long as there is a substantial contribution coming from Germany.
Here is our offer: You provide us with the details of your software using our formhttps://go.fzj.de/research_software_promotion and we’ll create your promo slide that will be shown ahead of a HiRSE Seminar and during HiRSE event breaks. If you have more ideas where this slide can be used, feel free to let us know (and use it yourself, of course)!
If you have any questions or would like to suggest a project that is not your own, please do not hesitate to contact us under hirse@fz-juelich.de.
National Initiatives
The DFG has signed the "Amsterdam Declaration on Funding Research Software Sustainability“. The declaration is aimed at funding organisations in science and the humanities and pursues the goal of strengthening the sustainability of research software based on financial, organisational and policy measures.https://www.dfg.de/en/news/news-topics/announcements-proposals/2024/ifr-24-114
More information on the handling of research software in the DFG’s funding activities: https://www.dfg.de/en/basics-topics/basics-and-principles-of-funding/research-software
HIDA Training courses
Check out all the relevant courses for research software engineering on the HIDA course catalogue:https://www.helmholtz-hida.de/course-catalog/en/
Upcoming events
deRSE25 – the 5th Conference for Research Software Engineering, Karlsruhe
The programme is now live (https://events.hifis.net/event/1741/timetable/#20250225) and the early bird rate is still valid for another week https://events.hifis.net/event/1741/page/514-conference-fees
Workshop on reproducible science and its transformative potential for science - 4th Helmholtz Reproducibility Workshop on March 25, 2025
In this workshop, the Helmholtz Open Science office will delve into the core of reproducible science and its transformative potential for science. The event will address ‘Software reproducibility for data processing and machine learning workflows in the age of AI’ and consider the ‘Contextualisation of reproducibility in the organisation of academic work’. There will also be two on-site workshops: One will deal with the ‘Reproducibility of methods and results’, the other with the ‘Pre-validation of images’.
Program and registration: https://events.hifis.net/event/1750/