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# System prepended metadata

title: RSECon25 report

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# RSECon25 Notes

Notes from RSECon 2025

From : Samantha 

!! Do not trust anything !! Many notes taken with only half a braincell active..

## The rise of open source in research software, A. Brock of OpenUK

Open Source: source public, human readable + OSD approved license

Book: [Open Source Law, Policy and Practice](https://academic.oup.com/book/44727)

Software, connected to hardware, data, standards!

OpenUK: Focus on people
- building cohesive open tech community
- influence law and policy
- skills development

Open Source? - shared source, also need appropriate license -> meeting open source definition
! ANYONE can use your code for ANY purpose (also commercial)
-> free flow! -> Crucial to success of open source

96% of software depends on open source
Companies are on a journey towards open source 
- recycle & reuse (nowadays part of learning how to code, but only within last 20 years)
Governments move towards open source
- avoid lock-in
- accessible, reuse

Challenges
Open Source not well understood
Open source <-> Proprietary
Proprietary: non open source (software with public or distributed source) & closed source

3 generations of open source:
1) Linux: true believer, social movement, concept of sharing
2) Kubernetes: come to tech first, later learned about open source and liked it
3) AI & future, doing it open?

Critical infra is run on open source
-> burden on developers wrt security
open source: quick bug fixes "many eyes make the bu(o?)gs shallow"

Sunsetting software "GitHub wasteland"
not all code lives forever -> maintenance needs to get recognized and paid

Sustainable software is open!

## RSE worldwide session

Impressive to see what the different associations are up to!
Many have similar challenges as we have around outreach and sustainability. 

**RSE in France** 
- REFERENS - standard job description in research and HEI
    - Defines 8 activity branches BAP for engineers in public research
    - BAP E: Research Software Engineers (19 job templates)
        - local, institutional and thematic networks (ASR/ResInfo, RI3, Calcul, DevLOG,...)
        - trainings, meetings, networking
        - central event 2011-2020 JDEV (2026 edition planned)
-> RSE exists, but no formal RSE society, but several independent & cooperative communities

**RSE Asia** 
- launched in 2021, volunteer driven community
- successful "Enabling open science through research code" community conversation series
- RSE Asia and APAN: first MoU
- Annual online 2 day conference

**US-RSE** 
- official since 2020
- Mission: Community, Advocacy, Resources, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
- strong growth since 2019, ~3k now
- Website, newsletter, slack, social media, job board, youtube
- multiple recurring events
- Working and affinity groups
- Executive director: support US-RSE mission, financial sustainability, advocacy, outreach
- establishing unconventional paths: changing academic culture, welcoming and sustainable environment, keep grassroot character

**Bioinformatics community in Nigeria (BON)** (did not attend)
running survey for training needs to build a roadmap and curriculum

**Switzerland**
- Now with logo and some funding (from multiple sources), eg enhanceR (network of swiss research IT groups)
- multiple community events across the country
- ORD?

**deRSE**
- many single RSEs, but also growing number of RSE groups
- different, typically mixed funding schemes, across all domains
- <100 paying association members, but >600 on mailing list and >400 on chat; 1 FTE working on funded project
- lots of events
- started in 2016
- many task forces
- multiple position papers written
- deRSE recognized by large national organizations
- still a lot of voluntary work
- FuturRSi: Conceptionalisation of German RSE network 

**Digital research alliance of Canada**
- National scope and mandate, member based, non-profit, federal funding
- Digital research infrastructure
- Research software directory
- Software Management plan template available
- Alliance strategy for research software: Capability, Community, Coordination
- Lots of stuff going on

**NL-RSE**
- meetups throughout the year, national research software day, mailing list, newsletter, policy advise
- Report: [Professionalizing the role of RSEs in the Netherlands](https://zenodo.org/records/15052095)
- National onboarding day (for research software trainers and supporters) + follow up buddy program
    - mentoring (long term), coaching (bit longer, free or funded, researchers do the work), advising (short, free)
- [research software training network](https://researchsoftwaretraining.nl/)
- Software reproducibility initiatives
    - NL reproducibility network
    - codecheck goes NL

**[ReSA - Research Software Alliance](https://www.researchsoft.org/)**
- global organization uniting decision makers and key influencers
- advancing research software and research software professionals
- Multiple forums and task forces
- First international RSE Conference, colocated with RSECon 2026 in Sheffield: Sep 7-8 2026

**RSE Chile**
- no RSE label in Chile
- RSE work through subcontracting
- national policy that recognizes software as research output
- lacking clear definition of what research software really is
- no incentives, no recognition 
- some courses organized
- SSI fellowship to better understand landscape

**Society of RSE**
- Annual conference (400 participants this year!), since 2016
- Events and initiatves grants
- Mentoring scheme
- Many ways of getting in touch/staying up to date
- EDIA
- Many special interest and regional groups
- currently running community survey


## Regional RSE groups in UK

Regional groups form when people see the need for exchanging with others. Biggest challenge seems to be to keep momentum going, and extend the circle of people organizing stuff. Outreach to RSE adjacent people is difficult as well and people are usually willing but lack the resources (mostly time) to organize. Even though everyone seems to appreciate the time spent for organizing events.

Solutions: Engage institutional leadership, start something, show that it works to then get funding. Regional events have networking as focus!

## Let's stop pretending to be unicorns - M. Weinzierl

RSE logo often with unicorn, unicorn as in "eierlegende wollmilchsau" (someone who knows everything about everything and will do everything you ask). In software we often follow the linux principle, do one thing and do it well. Focus!

UK RSE movement achievements: 
- recognized job title
- career pathways (even permanent contracts)
- central and embedded RSEs
- national association
- annual conference
- funding 
- increasing recognition & importance of software and its developers
- > RTP recognition

Still everyone has different complaints towards RSE -> expectation mismatch. Advertised as unicorn, but no one can fulfill everything! 
- Computational researchers working with RSEes: Things are not working out, they would rather have their own work funded
- Non-computational researchers working with RSEs: Too much discussion needed, no contribution to research, problems occuring after a project ends are not fixed
- RSEs: working on many projects -> need to context switch, things go slower when learning something new -> always feel behind & guilty
- RSE manager: "woman in the middle", why pay for community work/participation?

Ways to solve: 
1) Be more bespoke, specialize
    - embedded -> one theme
    - black box soluions
    - specialized RSE offer
2) Communicate
    - expectations
    - "no!" -> avoid overcommitment
    - templates
3) Collaborate, don't compete
    - RSE works on software, researcher on research
4) Mental health
    - say "I don't know" -> team work to find out
    - RSE: no need to be a unicorn

## What support does research software need? N. Chue Hong

Experiences from the [research software maintenance fund](https://www.software.ac.uk/programmes/research-software-maintenance-fund): High level of interest, beyond expectations. 360 expressions of interest. 126 of which achieved the highest score. Focus areas: technology, community, documentation, training, governance. Community and governance mostly concern for larger more mature projects. Mid-career -> higher scores in general. Wide spread of research areas.
Problematic applications: focus on novel development (not the point here), vague alignment and one-way community communication (should go both ways).

## Power of recognition, S. Hettrick

In RSE: Many problems have been solved at this point

Everybody wants the change, but if it touches close to home, too many barriers are built
-> Compelling arguments and value propositions needed
RSE has the numbers! -> Need to show value
[REF](https://2029.ref.ac.uk/): UK assessment framework for research quality, important for HEIs; has always(?) taken software and other artifacts, but not much were submitted; non academic staff submissions were not accepted; mostly publications submitted: only end of journey and quantity over quality is rewarded. Start rewarding all research outputs:-> research: equitable and effective
[HiddenREF](https://hidden-ref.org/): building a community via open competition (all research outputs welcome, no rules, except: no publications allowed)
-> REF29: now allow non-academic staff submissions
-> Takes a long time to work on change in research culture

## - [bead](https://handbook.microdata.io/onboarding/bead) - Data provenance for diverse teams, M.K.

Reproducibility: 
- Git, tagged commit -> code ok
- Data? frequent changes , complex pipelines, tool heterogenity, team dynamics -> data provenance is complex
    - real world: multiple steps

Solutions: 
- git but what about binaries?
- DVC, but only versions data
- orchestration, but language specific & complex

-> bead: packaging code and data in immutable snapshot, data dependencies declared explicitly

## Observability, A.Lubbock

-> ability to understand internal state via event driven outputs: logs, metrics, traces

- Troubleshooting
- Performance monitoring
- Security and auditing
- Usage metrics

Most useful in complex, remote and high reliability required (many ways to fail)

## Quality in research outputs, A. Esposito

Why matters? REF, quality (assurance?), originality and sustainability

-> RSE: human digital infrastructure; design and development

Tools as Kings Digital Lab: 
1) KDL: checklist for digital output assessment
2) PRD: project release document
-> promoting best practices, making the standards explicit
-> RSE as strategic partner, not subordinate service provide, integrated collaboration needed

## Other notes from talks or coffee break discussions

- [CURIOSS](https://curioss.org/): Worldwide center of compentence
- Open Source also linked to UN Sustainable Development Goals
- Academic open source: all about reproducibility, citation, diverse audience (not developers)
- [Guix](https://guix.gnu.org/): package manager, can build and execute binaries independently from host system
- [pre-commit](https://pre-commit.com/): in between your IDE and GitHub, working via pre-commit hooks on staging area: for e.g. common linters, autoformat, (testing) and typecheckers ; use of `rules` for catching errors before moving online. You still do the commit!

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> Below blogpost draft

# RSE worldwide session - taking inspiration back to the Nordics

In September 2025 I visited the RSECon 2025, the RSE conference in the UK with my colleague Ruslan as representatives from the Nordics. 
We had earlier been invited by Claire Wyatt the leader of the RSE worldwide session to present about Nordic-RSE. 

So I undusted our old Nordic-RSE presentation and went to work. What have we been up to in the last year (since the last RSE worldwide session)? 
And what a joy it was to look back at our achievements!

**Greetings from the North**

We had a successful in-person conference in Gothenburg this year with 43 participants, 23 contributions and a lot of networking. Read more about it in our [conference blog post](https://nordic-rse.org/blog/nrse-conference-report/). 

Some members of the community worked on getting the Journal of Open Source Software acknowledged and ranked in the Finnish Publication Forum. This makes it possible for PhD students to include a software paper into their PhD. Read more about that accomplishment in our [news post](https://nordic-rse.org/blog/joss-jufo/). 

Of course, we also have our challenges and shared about them in order to spark the discussion with other associations. 

Our main challenges these days is to come up with some membership benefits, retaining momentum and grow the group that "does stuff". 

We concluded with our next steps: 
Our next Nordic-RSE conference will take place in June 2026 in Tromsø, Norway. 
Apart from that we had a lunch meetup of RSEs in the capital region of Finland to celebrate international RSE day.
And in February 2026 we will gather Finnish RSEs and friends as well as other people working around and supporting researchers (data stewards, infrastructure support etc.) in Espoo for No-BS Computing (Nordic Basic Scientific Computing) meetup. 

We are also taking up or continuing our involvement with the international RSE council, survey and conference committee. 

Presentation slides: <https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17381047>

But now, what have I learned from other presentations in the RSE worldwide sessions?


**Shared challenges, inspiring solutions**

It was inspiring to see how active and diverse the global RSE community has become — from volunteer-led networks to nationally funded organizations. Despite the differences, we all seem to face similar challenges: keeping the community alive over time, getting proper recognition for RSE work, finding sustainable funding, and reaching new people. It was comforting (and motivating!) to realize that we’re not alone in this.

Many groups shared creative ways to tackle these issues. In France, RSE roles are formally recognized through the REFERENS job framework - a great step towards visibility. The Dutch community runs mentoring and onboarding programs to help new RSEs grow. In Canada, the Digital Research Alliance connects RSE work directly with national research infrastructure. And I loved the grassroots energy from RSE Asia and RSE Chile, showing how much can be achieved through passion and persistence.

The Society of RSE in the UK continues to impress with its scale and impact — 400 participants at their annual conference (this one!) and multiple ways to engage, from mentoring to grants and surveys.

**Taking inspiration back home**

I came back from RSECon'25 full of ideas and motivation. For Nordic-RSE, we’ll start or keep exploring how to make RSE roles and work more visible, look into the necessity of supporting local and national subcommunities, and how to secure stable support for our activities.

Thanks to the Software Sustainability Institute for funding my visit to RSECon this year via my fellowship on community building within Finland and the Nordics. It enabled a lot of new connections and deepened existing ones, as well as learning from the more experienced community builders and associations and of course all the great talks! 