What a fascinating topic for the Canberra and Victoria Branches of the SSA to tackle, along with the SSA Statistical Computing and Visualisation Section and the Australian Research Data Commons! Nearly 70 people Zoomed in on Tuesday 26 April to hear the panellists.
The event was discussion-driven, no talks, and the four presenters each brought an interesting angle to the conversation. There was Maelle Salmon from R OpenSci, Paula Andrea Martinez from ARDC, Thomas Lumley from the University of Auckland and Nick Golding of Telethon Kids’ Institute / Curtin University, with Kim-Anh Le Cao in the chair.
A growing number of people in academia combine their (perhaps informally gained) programming skills with their research expertise. This led to the establishment of the UK Research Software Engineering Association in 2013, which coined the term “Research Software Engineer” (RSE) to represent this community. RSEs do not have to have a formal training in software engineering and are often embedded across different disciplines, without perhaps being named as RSEs.
Research software are key pillars that underpin the modern landscape of statistics and data analysis, yet those who develop these tools often lack formal recognition or reward in the academic system. The panel tackled questions such as: does the academic system need to be modified to retain these talents? If so, how should the research and education system be modified to accommodate the growth of RSEs? And, how will RSEs contribute to shaping the field of statistics?
I had one useful takeaway: this reference from Paula on how to make research software citeable. The discussion and links to various resources was one of the highlights of the presentation.
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