Call: FAIR for Research Software Program 2024

We are excited to announce an exceptional opportunity for researchers (with PhD students and postdocs in mind) to participate in a 12-week program designed to significantly enhance your research software development and data management skills. This program is created in a close collaboration between the Digital Competence Centre (DCC) the TU Delft Library Research Data and Software Services (RDS) the ICT innovation.

• Are you already using programming, scripting, and data management in your research workflow and feel the need for improvement and incorporating best practices?
• Do you have code or scripts that you would like to improve and prepare for publication? 
• Are you struggling with incorporating new colleagues and collaborators into your code project?
• Are you aware of the FAIR principles but unsure how to apply them effectively to your research data and software?
• Are you interested in earning graduate school credits while enhancing your skills in research software development and data management? This program can provide TU Delft PhD candidates:
  • 2.5 GS credits if you join the 6-half days of the CodeRefinery workshop and actively participate in the exercises 
  • 0.5 GS credits when joining the mandatory meeting sessions of the program
  • That means, if you join the full program you can get 3 GS credits in the category Research Skill 

If you answered yes to any of these questions, our program is designed to address these challenges. Join us to incorporate essential practices and tools to improve your research.

This program is structured to guide you through the essentials of reproducible research software, the application of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles, and the refinement of your research software projects that may include data, computational workflows, machine learning models, analysis, scripts, notebooks, etc. The program consists of different activities and events such as the code refinery workshop, instructor support, availability to book time of experts on research software and data management, orientation seminars, examples, and resources.

See these two examples of projects from our previous edition:

• Carlos Andres Devia final presentation
• Leila Hashemi presentation

Who can apply?

Participants need to commit to:

• Attend the 6 half- day online sessions of the CodeRefinery workshop (March 12-14 and 19-21 from 09:00 – 13:30 hrs each day) Unless you have already gone through a CodeRefinery workshop in the past.
• Attendance to three afternoon seminars (Kickoff – 28 March, Midterm – 25 April, Final Presentations – 31 May)
• Work an estimate of 4 hours a week on your project, most of which will go to individual “project development” as described in the program schedule below.
• Showcase your project and progression in the mid-term and final presentation.
• Book at least one session with an expert using software collaborative tools built in systems such as GitHub, Gitlab, Gitea, Bitbucket.
• Open your project publicly under an appropriate license during the program to foster scientific collaboration and contributions.

Undergraduates are not eligible for this program

Topics that we will cover during the program

• Reproducibility: How to make sure your project is reproducible by others, tips, tricks and considerations.
• Documentation: This includes what to document, different levels of documentation, tools for documentation, tips and tricks.
• Research Software and Data Publishing: Having research software and data outputs ready for publication (FAIR), including tools and workflows that can help in achieving this.
• Research Software development: We touch upon best practices on collaborative software development, version control, refactoring, testing and code quality, and automated workflows.

How does it work?

The program kicks off with 6 half-days online sessions of the Coderefinery workshop (March 12-14 and 19-21 from 09:00 – 13:30 hrs each day), covering a broad spectrum of research software essentials. Following the workshops, you'll engage in a structured sequence of activities, including individual project work and three seminars for planning and sharing results and learnings. During the program, after the kick-off, you can book time with one of the DCC-support staff members experienced in software development and data management. The activities end with a final seminar focused on showcasing your refined FAIR research software project, and your main takeaways.

Timeline

Tentative schedule

The CodeRefinery workshop will be given online. The kick-off, mid-term and final presentations are in person.

This program is an outstanding opportunity to enhance your research skills, network with experts, and contribute to making your research more accessible and reproducible. Apply now to take your research project to the next level and achieve recognition within the academic community.