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Metrics for RSE Contributions

Manodeep Sinha (Swinburne), Justin Baker (CSIRO),

Rebecca Lange (Curtin), Heidi Perrett (CeresTag),

Nick May (Pawsey/ARDC), Nooriyah P. Lohani (NeSI)

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steering.committee@rse-aunz.org

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BoF Structure

10 mins: RSEs & RSE-AUNZ Background

20 mins: Discussion on different areas of RSE contributions

20 mins: Discuss metrics for RSEs

10 mins: Closing

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The term RSE, originally coined by the UK RSE association, says the following about RSEs:

“A growing number of people in academia combine expertise in programming with an intricate understanding of research. Although this combination of skills is extremely valuable, these people lack a formal place in the academic system.”

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https://rse-aunz.github.io/

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RSE-AUNZ Steering Committee

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RSE-AUNZ Steering Committee

Manodeep Sinha

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RSE-AUNZ Goals - Australia & NZ

  • Maintain an active, diverse, sustainable RSE Community.�
  • Define the role of RSEs within the eResearch, Academic, and Professional context.�
  • Form a connection between communities: people and organisations.�
  • Obtain recognition for RSE-AUNZ and its role.

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RSEs lack career progression

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Recognition for RSE Contributions

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Research Cycle

Design Experiment

Form Hypothesis

Collect

Data

Explore or Test

Communicate Results

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Research Cycle

Form Hypothesis

Design Experiment

Collect

Data

Explore or Test

Communicate Results

Deploy app or publish paper

Build app or write paper

Write code to apply a modeling algorithm.

Transform the data. Do feature engineering.

Visualize the data and/or results

Tidy data into useable form

Import data into software

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RSE Context

  • What kinds of qualifications/experience do RSEs have?
  • Where do RSE’s work?
  • Who is - and is not - an RSE?
  • What do RSE’s do?
  • How are RSE’s recognised for their contributions?

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Discussion about RSE contributions

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Aspects of RSE Contributions (that we thought of)

  • Core software development
  • Software Quality
  • (Existing) Tools & Techniques
  • Training & Outreach
  • Publishing (OSS, incl. publications)

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Areas of contribution with broad grouping

  • Software development and enhancement
    • Software contributions -> creating new software, creating/adopting new algorithms, improving efficiency (readability, runtime, disk usage, power usage etc)
  • Software Quality
    • Usability/maintainability improvements
    • Testing
    • Reusability
    • Best practices
  • Training and Outreach
    • Communities of Practice
    • Training
  • Tools and techniques
    • Knowledge of how to use 3rd party apps
    • Knowledge of what other discipline specific software is available
    • Visualisation
    • Containerisation
    • Security
    • Web presentation of data
  • Publication
    • Co-authorship
    • Visualisation

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Breakout room topics (total 2)

  • Group topic�
  • RSE-AUNZ suggested topic
    • Core software development
    • Innovation & Discovery (e.g., viz)

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Context for Metrics

  • Qualitative story or quantitative metric?
  • Is the metric measuring more of the research side or the software engineering side?
  • How does the metric compare between different domains?
  • How does the metric evolve with time?
  • How does the metric relate to underlying biases (e.g., men are cited more frequently than women)?

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Discussion about RSE metrics

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Conclusion/Next Steps

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Areas of contribution with broad grouping

  • Software development and enhancement
    • Software contributions -> creating new software, creating/adopting new algorithms, improving efficiency (readability, runtime, disk usage, power usage etc), adding tests
    • Usability/maintainability improvements -> adding documentation aimed at different levels,
    • Best practices
  • Training and Outreach
    • CoP
    • Training
  • Tools and techniques
    • Knowledge of how to use 3rd party apps
    • Knowledge of what other discipline specific software is available
    • Visualisation
    • Containerisation
    • Security
    • Web presentation of data
  • Publication
    • Co-authorship
    • Visualisation

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Acknowledgement of Country

We would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are the Traditional Custodians of the Land we are speaking from. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present of the Kulin Nation and extend that respect to other Indigenous Australians present.

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Who we are (RSE-AUNZ Steering Committee)

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Image credit: University of Nottingham