With the digitalisation of scientific practice and processes, the development of research software has become nowadays a fundamental component of scientific work. Proper management and documentation of the research software development process are thus essential for good scientific practice, reproducibility, and knowledge transfer. Similar to data management plans (DMPs), software management plans (SMPs) are an essential tool to document and organise research software development in all phases of its lifecycle. While DMPs have established themselves as a kind of quasi-standard in many disciplines, SMPs have not achieved a comparable adoption yet. Why is this the case? And what could the next developments look like?
Abstract: The Software Management Plan (SMP) is a relevant tool for handling research software. Despite benefits for research (e.g., low barrier for researchers, promotion of good practices), SMPs are not yet used across the board. A semi-automated approach can solve this problem. In the following document, we discuss a possible workflow for creating machine-actionable SMPs using various tools. This approach was developed during an NFDI4DataScience hackathon at the German National Library of Medicine (ZB Med) - Information Centre of Life Sciences on maSMPs at the end of 2023.
Software Management Plans (SMPs) help formalize a set of structures and goals that ensure the research software is accessible and reusable in the short, medium and long term. Although not as common as the Data Management Plans, SMPs are gaining attention, with different communities providing examples and guidance on around it (e.g., ELIXIR SMPs, eScience Center in the Netherlands SMP Guidance and the Max Plank Digital Libraries SMP).Machine-actionable SMPs (maSMPs) aim at providing a semantic layer on top of SMPs in the form of metadata schemas. Based on the ELIXIR SMPs and inspired by the work done on the Research Data Alliance (RDA) machine-actionable Data Management Plan (maDMP) application profile, the SemTec team at ZB MED has created an maSMP metadata schema using schema.org as base vocabulary. The latest version of such maSMP metadata schema takes advantage of the crosswalks created at the NFDI4DS hackathon on maSMPs 2023.11.28 to 2023-12-01 organized by the SemTec team at ZB MED. The crosswalks data corresponding to Max Plank Digital Library SMP, ELIXIR SMPs, and DataCite Metadata Schema 4.4 - OutputManagementPlan are included in this dataset collection. The files in the dataset collection are:"2023.11.29 maSMP crosswalk - NFDI4DS hackathon - Software.csv" - Crosswalk from the maSMP vr 2.0.0 to the Max Plank Digital Library SMP, SOMEF, and ELIXIR SMPs"2023.11.29 maSMP crosswalk - NFDI4DS hackathon - MngPlan.csv" - Crosswalk from the maSMP to DataCite Metadata Schema 4.4 - OutputManagementPlan and the Max Plank Digital Library SMP"2023.11.29 maSMP crosswalk - NFDI4DS hackathon - RDMO-SMP.csv" - Crosswalk from the Max Plank Digital Library SMP to metadata properties from different vocabularies"Tables description.png" - Image showing a crosswalk templateWe acknowledge the feedback provided by other participants in the NFDI4DS hackathon on maSMPs (Esteban Gonzalez ORCID:0000-0003-4112-6825, Yves Vincent Grossmann ORCID:0000-0002-2880-8947, Carlos Utrilla Guerrero ORCID:0000-0002-9994-1462, Mariaisabel Gonzalez-Ocanto ORCID:0000-0001-5485-9724,Thomas Pronk ORCID:0000-0001-9334-7190, David Wallace ORCID:0000-0001-8958-4601, Jürgen Windeck ORCID:0000-0003-1909-4353).The maSMP project is part of the NFDI4DataScience project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), project number 460234259. This dataset was created during the NFDI4DS hackathon on maSMPs at ZB MED 2023.
If you are developing or planning to develop your own software as part of your research, research data management plans can support you in the development process, but also in a possible software publication. Dr. Yves Grossmann from the Max Planck Digital Library presents a newly developed questionnaire for the Research Data Management Organiser (RDMO) to support researchers in those endeavours.
Open Science Pasteur
Yves Vincent Grossmann