One of the hardest metrics to obtain automatically is whether the documentation on the repositories (if any) is helpful for possible users and contributors. The next couple of weeks, and as part of the STEMPoint work placement, two students: Tasmin and Gideon, will help us to obtain such information. With those metrics, at ARC, we will be able to find out what type of training we need to focus on regarding open-source development by researchers at the university.
Tasmin and Gideon will be focusing on the following documentation aspects during the next couple of weeks. They may create an issue (or even a pull-request) pointing what is lacking on those repositories.
Additionally, they may try to classify the projects against the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the cases where there’s a clear match, those would be also reported to the repository.
Feel free to email us if you have any question, comments, or your open source project is not listed yet in our list of repositories.
]]>Muki Haklay, Professor of Geographical Information Science in the UCL Department of Geography, and UCL graduate Patrick Weber, have won the IEEE’s Pervasive Computing’s Test of Time Award for their 2008 paper on OpenStreetMap. The award honours the most influential papers that have had a lasting impact on pervasive computing over the past 25 years. Over the eighteen years since Muki’s paper was published the OpenStreetMap project, which was launched at UCL in 2004, has evolved into critical digital infrastructure that supports research, humanitarian response, navigation systems, smart cities, and countless location-based services.
This is quite a nice coincidence with the event that we will be running next week as part of this year’s London Data Week. Our Mapping festival event will have three parallel sessions to get your mapping curiosity satisfied.
It will include: mapping activities where you can help humanitarian aid organizations to map areas before they go there to help; workshops to learn how to use OpenStreetMap data to obtain insights about a particular location; and an exploratory activity around campus to improve the quality of the map information about UCL.
If you are interested on any (or all!) of those activities, join us on July 7th, from 14:00 at the main campus.
]]>Read more about the award at the Sainbury Wellcome Centre press release
Are you interested to get involved with BrainGlobe? Check their documentation and their GitHub organisation. There are lots of fantastic tools and cool brains 🧠!!
]]>Message from Arielle Bennett - SSI 2025 Fellowship.
TL;DR
🚀 Survey on your perspectives on contributing to open source projects in academia
⏰ Approx 20 mins.
📅 Closes 30 September
🌍 Open to anyone in academia, anywhere in the world
In research, we depend on open source software daily, whether that’s data analysis libraries, high performancing computing, specialist imaging frameworks, or out of sight in the stacks, but academic structures often don’t recognise or support the maintenance work these tools rely on, despite increasing awareness of its importance and efforts to fund open source scientific software.
With the new UKRI software policy around the corner, it’s never been more important to have a frank discussion about how to encourage, recognise, and promote both the use and maintenance of open source software in ways that benefit both individuals and the whole community.
This is why, as part of my SSI 2025 Fellowship, I’m running a survey to gather views from across the community, whether you are a casual contributor, a core project member, or someone who has never interacted with an open source project before. I want to explore what motivates, or blocks people from contributing to open source software projects.
Who should respond: No prior experience contributing to open source required! Researchers, students, research software engineers, academic IT professionals, librarians, data professionals, and anyone interested in strengthening the relationship between academia and open source.
How it’ll be used: Findings from this survey will be used in a policy briefing to help advocate for national policies which address common barriers at a structural level, and to develop practical recommendations for improving open source contribution levels across academia. Keep an eye out for a workshop at RSEcon 2025 if you’d like to explore this topic in more depth.
The survey will be open until 30 September 2025 and is open to researchers and research professionals anywhere in the world. 🌍
Interested in discussing more? Questions? Contact Arielle 📧
]]>Get your Expression of Interest ready by the 30th of May, and remember that the teams at ARC are available if you need help.
]]>Read the posts that three of our members wrote on their return: