Call for Proposals - the Helmholtz Software Award 2024 (internal call now closed)

(By the Helmholtz Information & Data Science Academy (HIDA), the Helmholtz Federated IT Services (HIFIS), the project HiRSE_PS, and the Helmholtz Open Science Office).

The Helmholtz Software Award 2024 is in its second year and again open for proposals. We’re launching the Call for Nominations today, 28th August and looking for nominations from across FZJ.  The award scheme aims to highlight the importance and development of sustainable, professional and high-quality research software at the same time as acknowledging the achievements of research software developers.

Software is one of the most important tools of modern science, and the development of research software is often a prerequisite for cutting-edge research. At the same time, software is an important outcome of research itself, but does not yet receive the necessary attention and reputation in the scientific community. Better attention and recognition also increase the motivation for subsequent use and opens up new opportunities for technology transfer. 

There are countless software projects in the Helmholtz Association, many of which produce outstanding research achievements. The Helmholtz Software Award aims to promote the development of professional and high-quality research software and to recognise the commitment to software as the basis of modern Data Science. The award will put the spotlight on sustainable development and operation of research software, collaboration between software developers and will help to make research software available for re-use.

Software applications and scientific communities are very diverse, so a single award cannot cover all the diversity. To ensure that this potential is fully exploited different aspects of research software development can be recognized, the prize will be awarded in up to three categories:

1. Best Scientific Software -This prize is awarded for the innovation contribution and the scientific results achieved with the software. 

2. Sustainability -This prize is given for software that is sustainable in the sense of software engineering according to the FAIR principles and for an extensive support and participation of the scientific community. 

3. Newcomer -This prize is awarded for young software with great potential and a visible growth rate in its application. It can be particularly interesting for doctoral students or junior research groups. 

The winners receive a one-time prize money, which they can use for their own scientific purposes. The prize for the best scientific software is endowed with 5,000 euros, the sustainability prize with 3,000 euros, and the newcomer prize with 2,000 euros. Each Helmholtz centre may nominate a maximum of 3 suitable candidates to this call.

Is my software eligible?
The Helmholtz Incubator Software Award is granted to Helmholtz scientists, engineers and teams (including PhD students) developing outstanding software solutions that meet the following conditions (plus more in the criteria document below):

Evidence that these criteria are met should be provided in the application documents as well as the information in the Helmholtz Research Software Directory.

The application is structured in two stages. Each Helmholtz Centre may nominate a maximum of three suitable candidates to the call via an internal selection committee. The candidates will then be invited by the organising committee of the Software Award at Helmholtz to provide documentation via a proposal management platform.

What is the call process?

Claire Wyatt (Community Manager for Research Software Engineering) is coordinating the internal process for nominations for FZJ.

FAQs from 2023

Question: Does a newcomer software have to meet all the same criteria as the older more established software? Will there be any leeway for the newcomer software award? Yes we understand that, may be we should/will consider that and have some leeway. 
(The previous answer to this question a few weeks ago was 'if the software isn’t cited in at least one scientific publication, maybe it should already be on at least arXiv').

Question: Do the citations have to list the software DOI? Or just name the software? Would be better to have the software DOI there, it could also be referenced via the Helmholtz RSD.  

Question: For the publications, what kind of publications are you looking for? We would like more detail response on what is appropriate. No special requirement, the more valuable the better for the main prize.

Question: If multiple centres are project partners on a software, how do they manage their nomination? They will have to talk to each and decide who enters the software for nomination. If the team involves partners from different centres, they could distribute the money as they want to but it does not make sense to have concurrent nominations for the same software.

Question: What does a ‘Helmholtz has a substantial share in the project’ mean? That there is a significant contribution from a Helmholtz Centre to the project in the sense that if there were external partners, they could say that a Helmholtz Centre is the majority contributor.  Having a PI or developer in a central position would be considered substantial.

Question: Can a 5 year old software be seen as a newcomer, because it's just starting to establish itself? why not, I would say yes. It is undefined anyway what the first year means, did the development start or was it the first pre-release or …?

Question: How open does the software have to be? Is there a requirement for this? No, only for the sustainability award it will not be considered!

Question: For the motivation letter it requires Arial. Can there be an alternative font used if the submitter doesn’t have this font? Yes, why not, it it has similar size

Question: For the letter, is it definitely 3000 CHARACTERS not WORDS? Yes, 3.000 words would be too much. Most of the information should be in the Helmholtz RSD.

Question: Does this mean 3000 characters including or excluding spaces? I would say including or what is being counted automatically?

Question: We plan to submit the motivation letter with a proper letterhead, address, signature. Do these count towards the 3000 character limit? I would not count the letterhead!

Author: Claire Wyatt