Supported by the Sloan Foundation since 2013, rOpenSci is an open source community that develops research software inside the R computing environment, especially focusing on the creation of expansions and modifications of R useful to the research scientist. The rOpenSci community has become known for high-quality, trusted research software, largely because every user-developed package is run through a robust peer review process before it is added to the rOpenSci suite. Increased access to basic data science skills combined with the demand for research software has led to rapid growth in software packages, many of which implement statistical methods. A large proportion of these software packages are highly variable in quality and lack appropriate tests to ensure that the software produces correct results consistently, across a variety of conditions. Much of this is due to the lack of clear standards (within and across fields) and guidance on how to implement them. Funds from this grant support a two-year effort to address this pressure on two fronts: to extend the rOpenSci model of scientific software peer review into substantial assessment of the implementation of statistical methods, and to build out a technical infrastructure to manage this expanded review process.

This grant supports the expansion of Dryad, a well-respected nonprofit and open source data repository that has focused on the deposit and curation of datasets in fields lacking a disciplinary data repository. Partnering with the University of California’s California Digital Library and CERN’s Zenodo repository, Dryad aims to develop a community data curation and publication platform driven by researcher needs and institutional values. The envisioned expansion will integrate Dryad with other software systems commonly used by researchers across the academic research and publication pipeline, including Jupyter, rOpenSci, DataSeer, ScholarOne, and Editorial Manager. Additional funds will support a partnership with Zenodo to integrate the two systems, supporting publishers and researchers, and allowing for triaged deposits to best practice repositories based on content type.

In 2015 the Foundation funded a pilot Community Engagement Fellows program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The program is run by longtime scientific community manager Lou Woodley, who led a yearlong planning process to develop a curriculum that tailors community engagement skills training to the scientific research context, and then recruited the first cohort of fellows for the 2017 calendar year. Drawn from professional societies and large scientific collaborations, fellows came together for in-person workshops at the beginning, middle, and end of the fellowship year, as well as for regular webinars and other online discussions. A robust program evaluation made clear that the fellowship year wasn’t just extremely effective for the participants, it also led to tangible investments in and foregrounding of community management by many of the host organizations. This grant funds a continuation of the Community Engagement Fellows program, which includes funds for administration, for the recruitment and support of the 2019 fellows cohort, and for a shorter-term “visiting scholars” program that could draw on program alumni and other community management professionals.