A Worldwide Source Code Index for Scientific Software FAIRness (SearchSECO)

FAIR principles stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. Making research software FAIR is important because, while research software is widely used in academic research, reusing it has proven to be difficult. It is also something that we, at the Netherlands eScience Center, are very passionate about. Challenges include extracting only the source code that is needed and giving credit to the research software engineers who developed the software. 

What are we trying to achieve and how?  

To make it easier to find and reuse software, we have developed a worldwide research software database. The database uses a clever way of indexing software, making it possible to find, extract and reuse research software at a much finer level of granularity. By indexing research software, we can monitor its impact and report on it to give a more balanced representation of its value for society. In this project, SearchSECO, we will measure the success of software and offer guidance to enable other research software centres to do the same. 

Curious to learn more about how research software can support research?

Our team of experts are involved in a wide variety of projects across all scientific domains. Take a look at some of the other projects we’re involved in to learn how our research software supports research.