Summary
Proper research software deposit and sharing are increasingly recognized as best practice to support open research, reproducibility, research integrity, collaboration and more. Proper research software planning to be a part of research funding requirements by government and research funding agencies are being discussed. Having a well-planned, well-written software management plan and applying some industry-proven software development techniques will prepare your research project to get ahead of time and benefit you and your research teams in the long term.
The US National Institutes of Health offers a concise yet informative resource outlining best practices for developing and sharing research software. Such resources prove invaluable for crafting an effective software management plan and optimizing your software during the development process.
FAIR Research Software Checklist
Findable
- Did you deposit your software in a public software repository with metadata?
- Does your software have a unique persistent identifier?
Accessible
- Can people freely, legally and easily acquire a copy of your software for usage (and/or modification)?
Interoperable
- Does your software use standard formats for inputs and outputs?
- Is your software capable to communicate with other software via standard protocols or other application programming interfaces (APIs)?
Reusable
- Did you properly document your software, including its designs & functionalities, installation guide and how to use the software?
- Did you test your software to verify its correctness across different platforms?
- Did you include a license with your software to clearly state how one may reuse and cite your software?