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Digital preservation – not forgetting the software
By t.johnson, on 11 April 2019
Why preserve software?
Digital preservation tends to focus on making data or digital objects open, FAIR and in the correct format for future use. But what about the software applications needed to store, retrieve and manipulate these data? Operating systems, hardware, licences and web hosting organisations all change over time. So, good research requires us to understand and preserve the software supporting our research data.
Software can have intrinsic value, e.g. when a computer model and data together make up the research output, in the growing field of Data Science and Computing, or with legacy software. Software development is also gaining recognition as an important element in research methodology – deserving of citation, academic recognition and funding. Similarly, algorithms are set to play a major role in improving replicability in research.
Software preservation events April and May 2019
Digital and software preservation events
(organised by the Digital Preservation Coalition)
‘Insert Coin to Continue: Briefing Day on Software Preservation’ 7 May 10-4pm
Access the live stream and recording from this event.
Sponsored by Jisc, this workshop is for all those interested in digital and software preservation. Course requirements: basic knowledge of digital content and the challenges to preserving it.
‘Counting on Reproducibility: Tangible Efforts and Intangible Assets’ 29 May 10-4pm
(title changed from ‘Financial Planning for Digital Preservation’)
Venue: Birmingham, B1 2EP. Booking is available. Places are limited to 3 per organisation.
How UCL can help you preserve and share software
- Read UCL guidance on software sustainability, preservation and sharing
- Access UCL Research IT Services team online guidance and support
- Come to our regular Research IT & data management drop-ins with your research software, data management, open science or policy questions.
Software preservation: helpful resources
- Why and how to preserve software using a repository
- Software citation principles
- Software Management Plan checklist
- How to cite software
- Making code citable with Github or Zenodo
- Software Sustainability Institute Top Tips
Digital Preservation Coalition webinars
- Software Preservation Overview
- Software in Digital/Scholarly Communications
- Software (Re)Use Cases
- Legal Possibilities for Software Preservation-Overview of Current Trends and Their Legal Implications
- Scaling Software Preservation and Emulation
- Software Collection Development
Futher Reading
- Digital Preservation and Curation: the Danger of Overlooking Software (Software Sustainability Institute slide summary)
blog updated 8 May 2019
