About the effort

This EAGER project will investigate the development and maintenance of software produced in research projects funded by the National Science Foundation. The goals of this project are:

1. To understand what factors influence software sustainability by gathering data from grant-funded research projects;
2. To describe current models of sustainability planning and suggest potential new models that could increase the likelihood of achieving long-term software sustainability; and
3. To develop new methods to evaluate research software sustainability.

To meet these goals we will use a mixed-methods research appraoch that includes both a survey as well as interviews with researchers that have produced software as part of an NSF-funded award. As part of the EAGER project, URSSI will collaborate with the CHAOSS community to better understand how repository metrics can be used to evaluate and forecast the sustainability of a research software project.

The data collected for this study will also be used to develop a set of models for research software sustainability planning. These models support scientists and engineers planning for software sustainability; help research funding agencies be better prepared to evaluate research software in grant applications, and enable institutions that support software development and maintenance to be equipped to support impactful research that in turn, produces impactful research software.