Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise: Findings from a One-Day Workshop
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| Title: | Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise: Findings from a One-Day Workshop |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Chelsea McCracken, Dylan Ruediger, Mark McBride, Patrick Masson, Josh Baron, Ithaka S+R |
| Source: | ITHAKA S+R. 2026. |
| Availability: | ITHAKA S+R. Available from: ITHAKA. One Liberty Plaza, 165 Broadway 5th Floor, New York, NY 10006. Tel: 212-500-2355; e-mail: ithakasr@ithaka.org; Web site: https://sr.ithaka.org |
| Peer Reviewed: | N |
| Page Count: | 99 |
| Publication Date: | 2026 |
| Sponsoring Agency: | National Science Foundation (NSF) Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Chan Zuckerberg Initiative |
| Contract Number: | 2512157 |
| Document Type: | Reports - Descriptive |
| Education Level: | Higher Education Postsecondary Education |
| Descriptors: | Computer Software, Research, Workshops, Sustainability, Barriers, Methods, Sense of Community, Researchers, Higher Education, Open Source Technology |
| Geographic Terms: | New York (New York) |
| DOI: | 10.18665/sr.325189 |
| Abstract: | Open source software (OSS) is increasingly recognized as a core component of open science. Higher education has served as the seedbed for highly successful OSS such as Apache, Linux, R, Python, Jupyter, and Scalar. Universities have also played a significant role in advancing OSS for their own use, including for teaching and learning and administration, partly in response to concerns about the cost of higher education and the movement towards open academic and administrative systems. The most visible and largest-scale products to result from these investments include learning management platforms like Open edX, Sakai, and Moodle, as well as administrative platforms such as Kuali and OpenCampus. While the open source software used for scholarly research (referred to throughout this report as "open source research software," or OSRS) often shares with these products an origin in higher education, it has significant features that differentiate it from these other contexts. For example, researchers who develop OSRS are often more focused on the scholarship they are pursuing than on the software they develop to facilitate that pursuit. Indeed, in an environment that incentivizes peer-reviewed journal articles over other research outputs, open source research software is often regarded as little more than a means to a specific end. Sustainability is a major challenge for even the most successful open source software. OSS with any meaningful user base typically requires ongoing community engagement to improve and maintain code. OSS sustainability also includes identifying a viable model for funding or institutional support; project governance (e.g., decision-making on product roadmaps); technology infrastructure (e.g., code repositories, bug-tracking software, etc.); business operations (e.g., accounting, invoicing, etc.); and navigating legal and licensing issues. Indeed, estimates suggest that many academic open source software projects are abandoned within their first few years because of limited understanding of sustainability needs and models. Open source research software often faces further challenges, such as a reliance on grant funding and the devaluation of open source development and maintenance in the academic incentive structure. Dispersed across specialized research communities, OSRS in particular has yet to secure a firm institutional footprint, and its "maintenance, continued growth, and improvement historically has been deprioritized by institutions, publishers, and funders as a less important byproduct of the research enterprise." Opportunities to lower the barriers to open source adoption and increase the likelihood of long-term OSRS sustainability could be created by developing robust, easy-to-follow guidance, specific to the OSRS context, designed to help researchers identify key questions to ask, practical steps to take, existing institutional resources and networks to leverage, and health metrics to adopt along the path to software development and implementation. OSRS sustainability will not be achieved quickly. Through the concerted efforts of many stakeholders in the research enterprise and the development of and investment in supportive infrastructure, it has taken over 10 years to make data sharing an established practice, and over 20 years to reach a point where Open Access publication is widely accepted. A comparable level of investment is likely necessary to normalize code sharing and OSRS sustainability. "Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise" (SOSSRE), a one-day in-person workshop, was designed to accomplish the following goals in support of bolstering the ecosystem of open source research software and developing holistic pathways for sustaining it within higher education: (1) Define sustainability in the context of open source research software and articulate unique sustainability challenges and resources in that context; (2) Identify potential methods for sustaining OSRS within higher education, determine their feasibility, and prioritize them for implementation; and (3) Strengthen a sense of community among people who use and/or develop OSRS and catalyze relationships between this group and people in other OSS communities. This report provides a detailed account of the workshop activities and findings about the sustainability of open source research software. [The Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise workshop was held in collaboration with the Apereo Foundation.] |
| Abstractor: | ERIC |
| Entry Date: | 2026 |
| Accession Number: | ED681105 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | Open source software (OSS) is increasingly recognized as a core component of open science. Higher education has served as the seedbed for highly successful OSS such as Apache, Linux, R, Python, Jupyter, and Scalar. Universities have also played a significant role in advancing OSS for their own use, including for teaching and learning and administration, partly in response to concerns about the cost of higher education and the movement towards open academic and administrative systems. The most visible and largest-scale products to result from these investments include learning management platforms like Open edX, Sakai, and Moodle, as well as administrative platforms such as Kuali and OpenCampus. While the open source software used for scholarly research (referred to throughout this report as "open source research software," or OSRS) often shares with these products an origin in higher education, it has significant features that differentiate it from these other contexts. For example, researchers who develop OSRS are often more focused on the scholarship they are pursuing than on the software they develop to facilitate that pursuit. Indeed, in an environment that incentivizes peer-reviewed journal articles over other research outputs, open source research software is often regarded as little more than a means to a specific end. Sustainability is a major challenge for even the most successful open source software. OSS with any meaningful user base typically requires ongoing community engagement to improve and maintain code. OSS sustainability also includes identifying a viable model for funding or institutional support; project governance (e.g., decision-making on product roadmaps); technology infrastructure (e.g., code repositories, bug-tracking software, etc.); business operations (e.g., accounting, invoicing, etc.); and navigating legal and licensing issues. Indeed, estimates suggest that many academic open source software projects are abandoned within their first few years because of limited understanding of sustainability needs and models. Open source research software often faces further challenges, such as a reliance on grant funding and the devaluation of open source development and maintenance in the academic incentive structure. Dispersed across specialized research communities, OSRS in particular has yet to secure a firm institutional footprint, and its "maintenance, continued growth, and improvement historically has been deprioritized by institutions, publishers, and funders as a less important byproduct of the research enterprise." Opportunities to lower the barriers to open source adoption and increase the likelihood of long-term OSRS sustainability could be created by developing robust, easy-to-follow guidance, specific to the OSRS context, designed to help researchers identify key questions to ask, practical steps to take, existing institutional resources and networks to leverage, and health metrics to adopt along the path to software development and implementation. OSRS sustainability will not be achieved quickly. Through the concerted efforts of many stakeholders in the research enterprise and the development of and investment in supportive infrastructure, it has taken over 10 years to make data sharing an established practice, and over 20 years to reach a point where Open Access publication is widely accepted. A comparable level of investment is likely necessary to normalize code sharing and OSRS sustainability. "Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise" (SOSSRE), a one-day in-person workshop, was designed to accomplish the following goals in support of bolstering the ecosystem of open source research software and developing holistic pathways for sustaining it within higher education: (1) Define sustainability in the context of open source research software and articulate unique sustainability challenges and resources in that context; (2) Identify potential methods for sustaining OSRS within higher education, determine their feasibility, and prioritize them for implementation; and (3) Strengthen a sense of community among people who use and/or develop OSRS and catalyze relationships between this group and people in other OSS communities. This report provides a detailed account of the workshop activities and findings about the sustainability of open source research software. [The Sustaining Open Source Software in the Research Enterprise workshop was held in collaboration with the Apereo Foundation.] |
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| DOI: | 10.18665/sr.325189 |
