# Nordic-RSE contribution to RSE "canonical" paper

## Authorship

Deadline for nominating one representative from the Nordic-RSE:
- 25 February 2022
- one representative from each of the RSE organizations to join us as authors

### Name one representative
Add +1 if the person who want to name is already listed.

- Anne Fouilloux +1+1+1
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## Content

The Nordic-RSE needs to answer the following bullet points:
- History of the Nordic-RSE organization (how it started, why they started it, etc.)

- A summary of the research software landscape in their country if there is something specifically interesting about it. Possibly something about the amount of software being used, or funders.
- amount of software being used? I don't understand what that means...
- Anything on the number of RSEs both in the organization and in the country/area
- Summary of demographics (number of RSEs, RSE groups (if applicable), etc.)
- Anything else that is specific to the country’s experience of RSE
- Challenges and opportunities

## Content answers

- History of the organization:
- [Nordic-RSE](https://nordic-rse.org/) network started in 2018: the environment for research software development around the Nordic countries was discussed in a speed-blogging session at the all-hands meeting of the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC) held in early 2018 in Norway. This resulted in a [published blog post](https://neic.no/news/2018/05/04/building-a-community/) where various challenges faced by research software developers were identified, and possible ways to improve them were outlined.
- Organisation officially registered in 21.10.2021.
- The purpose of the organisation is to bring together and support research software engineers in the Nordics and Baltics. The reason why it started as Nordic-RSE and not for each individual "country" was the Nordic collaboration context and the fact that Nordic countries have few inhabitants, so potentially few Research Software Engineers.

- Some activities that have been organised
- Ongoing [seminar series](https://nordic-rse.org/events/seminar-series/), with talks and workshops about themes important to RSE
- [Online conference](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2020-online-get-together/) in December 2020
- [First unconference](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2021-online-unconference/) in June 2021
- [Next unconference](https://nordic-rse.org/events/2022-online-unconference/) in August 2022

- active groups currently "tracked"
- Aalto Scientific Computing (8 members, 2 full time RSEs)
- Helsinki University, 1 position with the RSE title.
- Turku University (about 2 members)
- [NTNU Research Software Engineers Community](https://rse.org.ntnu.no/)
- Most Research Software Engineers in the Nordics are working "alone" e.g. are not part of specific research software engineer groups. In addition, as the organisation is very young, tracking RSEs (or people practically working as RSEs without knowing of such concept) is an active goal for the organisation.

- related projects / orgs going on in the nordics
- CodeRefinery: ongoing project started in 2016 to teach good coding practices in the nordics and baltics
- Nordic RSE has had a strong connection to CodeRefinery from the beginning. We share many active members and the willingness to promote best software practices in academia.
- CSC: Finnish IT center for science, provides IT support and modeling, computing and information services for academia, research institutes and companies in Finland
- ...

- Anything else that is specific to the country’s experience of RSE

- Challenges and opportunities
- We cover multiple countries. Institutions are different in different countries. Affecting an institution in one country does not reflect to the others.
- We naturally started working remotely before COVID and continue to develop remote participation.
- Due to close collaboration between the countries, success in one country changes attitudes in the others.
- Any events organize and services we use need to be international by default. This is a challenge, but once it's done, it's a great opportunity.

## Process for writing the paper will be written

- some introductory text about the context will written, and then the answers will be used to draft more of the paper. **The person nominated does not need to be involved at that stage;**

- All the authors will get together (online) to see what think, what we need to change, and what else we need to add. **Here we expect the nominated person to join and contribute to the paper at this stage.**