The case for free and open source software in research and scholarship

Journal Article · Mon Mar 29 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A, Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2020.0079· OSTI ID:1836982

Fortunato, Laura ^[1]; Galassi, Mark ^[2]

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1. Univ. of Oxford (United Kingdom); Santa Fe Inst. (SFI), Santa Fe, NM (United States)
2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Free and open source software (FOSS) is any computer program released under a licence that grants users rights to run the program for any purpose, to study it, to modify it, and to redistribute it in original or modified form. Here, our aim is to explore the intersection between FOSS and computational reproducibility. We begin by situating FOSS in relation to other ‘open’ initiatives, and specifically open science, open research, and open scholarship. In this context, we argue that anyone who actively contributes to the research process today is a computational researcher, in that they use computers to manage and store information. We then provide a primer to FOSS suitable for anyone concerned with research quality and sustainability—including researchers in any field, as well as support staff, administrators, publishers, funders, and so on. Next, we illustrate how the notions introduced in the primer apply to resources for scientific computing, with reference to the GNU Scientific Library as a case study. We conclude by discussing why the common interpretation of ‘open source’ as ‘open code’ is misplaced, and we use this example to articulate the role of FOSS in research and scholarship today.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: 89233218CNA000001
• OSTI ID: 1836982
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--13-26197
• Journal Information: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A, Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Journal Name: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A, Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences Journal Issue: 2197 Vol. 379; ISSN 1364-503X
• Publisher: The Royal Society Publishing
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
GNU Scientific Library (GSL)
computer science
free and open source software (FOSS)
open research
open scholarship
open science
reproducibility