Blanc Catala Isabelle, Di Cosmo Roberto, Giraud Mathieu, Le Berre Daniel, Louvet Violaine, Renaudin Sophie
Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche, F-75000 Paris, France.
Inria, Université Paris Cité, F-75000 Paris, France.
Open Res Eur. 2023 Oct 25;3:185. doi: 10.12688/openreseurope.16069.1. eCollection 2023.
Software development has become an integral part of the scholarly ecosystem, spanning all fields and disciplines. To support the sharing and creation of knowledge in line with open science principles, and particularly to enable the reproducibility of research results, it is crucial to make the source code of research software available, allowing for modification, reuse, and distribution. Recognizing the significance of open-source software contributions in academia, the second French Plan for Open Science, announced by the Minister of Higher Education and Research in 2021, introduced a National Award to promote open-source research software. This award serves multiple objectives: firstly, to highlight the software projects and teams that have devoted time and effort to develop outstanding research software, sometimes for decades, and often with little recognition; secondly, to draw attention to the importance of software as a valuable research output and to inspire new generations of researchers to follow and learn from these examples. We present here an in-depth analysis of the design and implementation of this unique initiative. As a national award established explicitly to foster Open Science practices by the French Minister of Research, it faced the intricate challenge of fairly evaluating open research software across all fields, striving for inclusivity across domains, applications, and participants. We provide a comprehensive report on the results of the first edition, which received 129 high-quality submissions. Additionally, we emphasize the impact of this initiative on the open science landscape, promoting software as a valuable research outcome, on par with publications.
软件开发已成为学术生态系统不可或缺的一部分，涵盖所有领域和学科。为了支持按照开放科学原则进行知识共享和创造，特别是为了实现研究结果的可重复性，提供研究软件的源代码以允许修改、重用和分发至关重要。认识到开源软件在学术界贡献的重要性，高等教育和研究部长在2021年宣布的第二项法国开放科学计划设立了一项国家奖项，以促进开源研究软件的发展。该奖项有多个目标：首先，表彰那些投入时间和精力开发优秀研究软件的软件项目和团队，这些项目和团队有时历经数十年，却往往鲜为人知；其次，提请人们注意软件作为一种有价值的研究成果的重要性，并激励新一代研究人员效仿和学习这些范例。我们在此对这一独特举措的设计与实施进行深入分析。作为法国研究部长明确设立以促进开放科学实践的国家奖项，它面临着一项复杂的挑战，即要公平评估所有领域的开放研究软件，力求在领域、应用和参与者方面做到包容。我们提供了关于第一版结果的全面报告，该版本共收到129份高质量的参赛作品。此外，我们强调了这一举措对开放科学格局的影响，将软件提升为与出版物同等重要的有价值研究成果。
