Over the past six months, the IOI team has been working on a study aimed at understanding the landscape of research software infrastructure and identifying the gaps, challenges, and opportunities for advancing its sustainability and resilience. This study, sponsored by the Sloan Foundation, aimed at identifying:

  • Existing connections between different infrastructure services and initiatives, and where new connections can be built to advance sustainability and resilience of the ecosystem;
  • Areas in the ecosystem where there is overcrowding/excessive functional overlap, and where there are gaps, blockers, vulnerabilities, and/or critical dependencies that need addressing;
  • Indications of what helps infrastructure services and initiatives succeed in adding value to the research software community.

Through a combination of desk research, stakeholder interviews, and analysis, IOI has built a preliminary understanding of what is most needed, feasible, and useful to ensure the sustainability of research software. 

As we conclude the preliminary study, the IOI team will host an open presentation where we hope to spark a conversation with the community: discuss the key findings from our research and explore next steps towards a healthy, resilient research software ecosystem. 

This open presentation will be on January 23, 2025 at 11am Eastern Time and we would appreciate it if you would join us on the day. 

You can register for this presentation now https://investinopen.civicrm.org/civicrm/event/register?id=57&reset=1

Posted by Jerry Sellanga & Emmy Tsang