incnb/software-assessment-framework

Codebase for facilitating the assessment of different criteria for research software

software-assessment-framework

Codebase for facilitating the assessment of different criteria for research software

The Software Assessment Framework is a project to make it easier for developers to understand the "quality" of a piece of research software, which in turn will allow them to improve software reuse and increase recognition for good software development practice.

To ensure adoption and impact, it is important that the use of this framework is bottom-up (encouraging code owners to be proactive in getting their codes assessed); easy-to-use (with objective measures); simple (to avoid confusion); enables community norms (be understanding of the relative priorities of different communities); and minimises game playing.

Assessment Categories

The top level assessment categories are:

• Availability: can a user find the software (discovery) and can they obtain the software (access)?
• Usability: can a user understand the operation of the software, such that they can use it, integrate it with other software, and extend or modify it?
• Maintainability: what is the likelihood that the software can be maintained and developed over a period of time?
• Portability: what is the capacity for using the software in a different area, field, or environment?

Planning

• Requirements
• Roadmap

Acknowledgements

This work has been funded by EPSRC through additional support to grant EP/H043160/1 and EPSRC, ESRC and BBSRC through grant EP/N006410/1.