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Research Software

Community Forum

July 2022

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Vive la différence - �research software engineers

Report

Aims Full report: 10.5281/zenodo.6816193

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How to reframe research software engineering (RSE) to place diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) as a central organising principle?

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2018 international RSE demographics: 73-92% were male, and most commonly ranged in age from 25-44 (Philipe, 2018).

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Benefits of more DEI in RSE could include:

• broadening the range of contributors to improve scientific and social outcomes
• Increase innovation, sustainability, and re-use

Organisation

Hybrid event:

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• In-person element 19-22 April 2022 at the Lorentz Centre in the Netherlands
• Corresponding online elements March-April 2022

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Open call for attendees:

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• 40 participants from 12 countries
• 6 participants from Colombia, India, Kenya, and Namibia.
• 82% of the participants identified as from an underrepresented minority
• 56% of these identified as from an underrepresented minority other than women

Question 1: What are useful approaches to reposition DEI as central to RSE?

Deconstructed the above statement as:

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• DEI means different things in different countries eg underrepresented minority is a term not used in all countries
• RSE is not a term used in many countries.

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Reframed as:

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• How can the benefits of integrating software engineering with research occur in a way that is relevant to each cultural context?

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Question 2: Which social processes and technology can help?

Talks from social science perspectives that connected efforts on improving DEI in RSE/open source community:

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• Lorentz workshops videos and slides

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Useful technology:

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• Community Health Analytics Open Source Software (CHAOSS) DEI metrics
• GenderMag enables software practitioners to find gender-inclusivity "bugs" in their software, and then fix bugs
• Gender Decoder checks whether a job advertisement has subtle linguistic gender-coding

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Outcomes

1. Ongoing webinars through DiveRSE, a public forum.
2. Links between computational social science, collaborative and human aspects of software engineering, including potential pilots and collaborations.
3. Opportunity to contribute to an upcoming book on DEI in software engineering.
4. Introduce the concept of RSE to organisations in Kenya, Namibia and Norway.
5. Identification of the key research questions in this area - Software Sustainability Institute planning to explore.

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Next steps (indicate if you’re interested in working on any)

• Continue to grow DiveRSE?
• Draft values for the RSE community, with DEI at centre?
• Raise awareness of research on how different behaviours in software/research teams negatively impact minority groups?
• Annual conference?
• Workshops for DEI change agents?
• Document DEI-centric workshop practices?

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Thanks to

• All workshop participants and organisers

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• Lorentz Centre

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• Our funders:
1. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
2. Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
3. Ford Foundation

Where are you, your organisation, or your initiative:

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• Not achieve to achieve outcomes on your own?
• Need to collaborate to influence broader processes?

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• Want to contribute to help achieve these outcomes?
• Are willing to contribute energy and effort ?

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Full report: 10.5281/zenodo.6816193