Episode 136: Daniel S. Katz on the Research Software Alliance (ReSA)

Guest Daniel S. Katz Panelists Richard Littauer | Ben Nickolls | Amanda Casari Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about sustaining open source for the long haul. We are very excited to have as our guest Daniel S. Katz, who’s Chief Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Research Associate Professor in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He’s also a Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Fellow and is one of the founding editors and the current Associate Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Open Source Software. His interest is in cyber infrastructure, advanced cyber infrastructure, and solving problems at scale, but he’s also interested in policy issues, citation, and credit mechanisms. Today, Dan is joining us to talk about the Research Software Alliance (ReSA), how academia has changed over the years, and why funding is necessary for these projects. Go ahead and download this episode now to find out more! [00:04:39] Dan explains what the Research Software Alliance is. [00:08:09] We find out the difference between the ReSA and URSSI communities. [00:11:34] Richard wonders why funding is necessary for all these projects and how do we diversify our funding to make sure that it’s not just Sloan that does this. [00:17:40] Ben asks if Dan thinks the conversation within academia and within research institutions is more mature and developed or more trustful compared to what’s happening in commercial industry right now. [00:22:00] We find out why research software is fundamentally different from corporate software from the makers perspective, and Dan shares with us a project he’s working on called Parsl. [00:26:25] Amanda brings up the Journal of Open Source Software and asks Dan if he thinks that software is viewed yet as a first class research project online with a published paper, and if not, what are the barriers and what things need to change in the academia industry. [00:30:38] If you’re a Research Software Engineer, Software Engineer, Engineer, or at companies or academies, find out how you can get involved in ReSA. Dan also tells us more about the importance of funding. [00:34:03] Find out the best places you can follow Dan online. Spotlight [00:34:45] Ben’s spotlight is his favorite piece of research work called FITS. [00:35:24] Amanda’s spotlight is a paper she read titled, “Did You Miss My Comment or What?” Understanding Toxicity in Open Source Discussions [00:36:37] Richard’s spotlight is a paper he read titled, “How many genera of Stercorariidae are there?” [00:37:29] Dan’s spotlight is the book, Radical Candor by Kim Scott. Links SustainOSS SustainOSS Twitter SustainOSS Discourse [email protected] Richard Littauer Twitter Ben Nickolls Twitter Amanda Casari Twitter Daniel S. Katz Twitter Daniel S. Katz LinkedIn FAIR Principles RDA-Research Data Alliance FORCE11-The Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship Sustain Podcast-Episode 88 and Episode 79 with Leah Silen The Sloan Foundation Technology program announces over $5M in new grants Research Software Alliance URSSI Karthik Ram-UC Berkeley FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS) Principles A survey of the state of the practice for research software in the United States (PeerJ Computer Science) OSPO++ Open Work in Academia Summit-RIT Software Sustainability Institute Parsl ROpenSci The Journal of Open Source Software NCSA Post-doc posting on policy for sustainable code in research software CIG-Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics FITS “Did You Miss My Comment or What? Understanding Toxicity in Open-Source Discussions How many genera of Stercorariidae are there? (Springer Link) Radical Candor by Kim Scott Credits Produced by Richard Littauer Edited by Paul M. Bahr at Peachtree Sound Show notes by DeAnn Bahr Peachtree Sound Special Guest: Daniel S. Katz.Support Sustain