Survey on your perspectives on contributing to open source projects in academia

15 Jul 2025

✨ Calling all academic coders! We need your views on open source in academia ✨

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 📧