Apologies for cross-posting.

--Robert



Final Call for Submissions: 

4th Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE4) 
(http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk/wssspe4/) 

Location: School of Computer Science, Kilburn and IT Buildings, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK 
Dates: 2 ½ days from Sept. 12th noon – Sept. 14th 5 pm, 2016 
Immediately preceding and co-located in Manchester with First Conference of Research Software Engineers 
(RSE Conference) (Sept 15-16 at Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, UK) 

Follow @wssspe, tweet with #wssspe 

A nominal registration fee may be charged. 

Abstract: 

Progress in scientific research is dependent on the quality and accessibility of research software at all levels. It 
is now critical to address many new challenges related to the development, deployment, maintenance, and 
sustainability of open-use research software: the software upon which specific research results rely. Open-use 
software means that the software is widely accessible (whether open source, shareware, or commercial). 
Research software means that the choice of software is essential to specific research results; using different 
software could produce different results. 

In addition, it is essential that scientists, researchers, and students are able to learn and adopt a new set of 
software-related skills and methodologies. Established researchers are already acquiring some of these skills, 
and in particular, a specialized class of software developers is emerging in academic environments who are an 
integral and embedded part of successful research teams. WSSSPE provides a forum for discussion of these 
challenges, including both positions and experiences, and a forum for the community to assemble and act. 

WSSSPE4 will consist of two separate tracks with some joint sessions: 

Track 1 – Building a sustainable future for open-use research software has the goals of defining a vision of the 
future of open-use research software, and in the workshop, initiating the activities that are needed to get there. 
The idea of this track is to first think about where we want to be 5 to 10 years from now, without being too 
concerned with where we are today, and then to determine how we can move to this future. 

Track 2 – Practices & experiences in sustainable scientific software has the goal of improving the quality of 
today’s research software and the experiences of its developers by sharing practices and experiences. This 
track is focused on the current state of scientific software and what we can do to improve it in the short term, 
starting with where we are today. 

Topics of interest include but are not limited to: 

• Development and Community 
• Best practices for developing sustainable software 
• Models for funding specialist expertise in software collaborations 
• Software tools that aid sustainability 
• Academia/industry interaction 
• Refactoring/improving legacy scientific software 
• Engineering design for sustainable software 
• Metrics for the success of scientific software 
• Adaptation of mainstream software practices for scientific software 
• Professionalization 
• Career paths 
• RSE as a brand 
• RSE outside of the UK or Europe 
• Increase incentives in publishing, funding and promotion for better software 
• Training 
• Training for developing sustainable software 
• Curriculum for software sustainability 
• Credit 
• Making the existing credit and citation ecosystem work better for software 
• Future credit and citation ecosystem 
• Software contributions as a part of tenure review 
• Case studies of receiving credit for software contributions 
• Awards and recognition that encourage sustainable software 
• Software publishing 
• Journals and alternative venues for publishing software 
• Review processes for published software 
• Software discoverability/reuse 
• Proposals and case studies 
• Reproducibility and testing 
• Reproducibility in conferences and journals 
• Best practices for code testing and code review 

Important Dates: 
• Submission of lightning talks: July 10 
• Submission of Track 1 idea papers: July 10 
• Submission of Track 2 position papers, experience papers, presentations of previously 
published works, and demos: July 10 
• Submission of travel support requests: July 10 
• Lightning talk decisions announced: Aug 1 
• Track 1 idea papers decisions announced: Aug 1 
• Track 2 position papers, experience papers, presentations of previously published works, 
and demo decisions announced: Aug 1 
• Travel support decisions announced: Aug 2 

Submission types and formats: 
• Lightning talks: a short paper, up to 2 pages, that if accepted can be conveyed in a 5 to 7 minute talk, 
either on Track 1: Building a sustainable future for open-use research software or Track 2: Practices & experiences 
in sustainable scientific software. Lightning talks may be based on either novel or previously published work, but 
must contain a core idea that will contribute to the discussion in the workshop. 
• Idea papers: a longer paper, up to 8 pages, that presents implementable proposals related to Track 1: Building a 
sustainable future for open-use research software. Track 1 participants will build on the proposals and ideas in 
these papers, with the goal of initiating the planning, development, and execution of some of the ideas during the 
workshop itself. Given the magnitude and importance of the task at hand, the WSSSPE4 organizing committee 
encourages these proposals to be developed on an open, public, and inclusive basis. Submitters are invited to 
present a vision of some aspect of the future of open-use research software, and a plan of activities to gather and 
organize the resources needed to get there. 
Example idea paper topics: 
• Adaptation of industrial software engineering principles into the research software community with a plan to 
fund the work 
• Funding and scaling software carpentry style training in advanced topics 
• Infrastructure and funding for community maintenance of open use research software 
• Scaling the SSI beyond the UK 
• Specific proposals of how to bridging/network the various research software engineering communities in scalable 
manner without destroying independence and unique foci of each community 
• Position papers: a longer paper, not previously published, up to 8 pages, that if accepted can be conveyed in 
a 15 to 20 minute talk, on Track 2: Practices & experiences in sustainable scientific software, specifically discussing
what we can do to improve sustainable scientific software in the short term, starting with where we are today. 
• Experience papers: a longer paper, not previously published, up to 8 pages, that if accepted can be conveyed 
in a 15 to 20 minute talk, on Track 2: Practices & experiences in sustainable scientific software, specifically discussing 
current practices and experiences and how they have been used to improve the quality of today’s research software 
and/or the experiences of its developers. 
• Presentation of previously published work: a short paper, up to 2 pages, that if accepted can be conveyed in 
a 15 to 20 minute talk, describing a previous published work by the authors and its relevance to Track 2: Practices & 
experiences in sustainable scientific software on the topic of improving the quality of today’s research software and 
the experiences of its developers by sharing practices and experiences. 
• Demos: a short paper, up to 2 pages plus 2 pages of screenshots, that if accepted can be conveyed in a 10 to 
15 minute demonstration, showing a tool or process relevant to Track 2: Practices & experiences in sustainable 
scientific software, that improves the quality of today’s research software and/or the experiences of its developers. 
Demo submissions may be based on previously published work. 

Submission process: 
All submissions should be created in PDF format. They should begin with a title, author names and affiliations, a short
abstract, then the body of the submission. The title should begin with “Lightning talk:” or “Position paper:” or 
“Experience paper:” or “Idea paper:” or “Previously published:” or “Demo:”. Submissions should also include a statement
of their license, preferably CC BY 4.0. Submissions should be made via https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wssspe4.
WSSSPE4 accepted submissions (except presentations of previously published work) will be published by WSSSPE as a 
special collection in http://ceur-ws.org/. Authors retain copyright to their work and are free to self-publish their submissions 
or accepted papers elsewhere in addition. 


Preliminary Agenda: 

Sept 12 pm – Joint session of both tracks 

Introduction 
Keynote 
Lightning talks 
Updates on actions and activities from WSSSPE3 working groups 
Discussion and planning for the remainder of WSSSPE4 

Sept 13 (all day) and 14 (until 3 pm) – Parallel tracks 

Track 1: This will be a set of working sessions with a facilitated discussion, breakout sessions, report backs, and active 
writing towards the track goal of defining a vision of the future of open-use research software, and a plan of activities that 
are needed to get there. 
Track 2: presentations of position papers, experience papers, previously published works, and demos; and breakout 
sessions or unconference sessions. 

Sept 14 (1:30 pm – 5 pm) – Joint session of both tracks 

Panel on best practices 
Summary and discussion of each tracks’ progress 
Planning for future events 

Organizing Committee: 
• Gabrielle Allen, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA 
• Jeffrey Carver, University of Alabama, USA 
• Sou-Cheng T. Choi, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA 
• Tom Crick, Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK 
• Michael R. Crusoe, Common Workflow Language project 
• Sandra Gesing, University of Notre Dame, USA 
• Robert Haines, University of Manchester, UK 
• Michael Heroux, Sandia National Laboratory, USA 
• Lorraine J. Hwang, University of California, Davis, USA 
• Daniel S. Katz, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA 
• Kyle E. Niemeyer, Oregon State University, USA 
• Manish Parashar, Rutgers University, USA 
• Colin C. Venters, University of Huddersfield, UK 

Program Committee: 
• David Abramson, University of Queensland, Australia 
• Lorena A. Barba, George Washington University, USA 
• Ross Bartlett, Sandia National Laboratories, USA 
• Christoph Becker, University of Toronto, Canada 
• David Bernholdt, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA 
• Stefanie Betz, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany 
• Coral Calero, Universidad Castilla La Mancha, Spain 
• Ishwar Chandramouli, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, USA 
• Ruzanna Chitchyan, University of Leicester, UK 
• Neil Chue Hong, Software Sustainability Institute, University of Edinburgh, UK 
• Karen Cranston, Duke University, USA 
• Ewa Deelman, Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, USA 
• Dave De Roure, Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford, UK 
• Charlie E. Dibsdale, O-Sys, Rolls Royce PLC, UK 
• Alberto Di Meglio, CERN, Switzerland 
• Anshu Dubey, Argonne National Laboratory, USA 
• Nadia Eghbal, Independent Researcher (via Ford Foundation), USA 
• Peter Elmer, CERN, Switzerland 
• Martin Fenner, DataCite, Germany 
• David Gavaghan, University of Oxford, UK 
• Mike Glass, Sandia National Laboratories, USA 
• Carole Goble, University of Manchester, UK 
• Joshua Greenberg, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, USA 
• Michael K Griffiths, University of Sheffield, UK 
• Sarah Harris, University of Leeds, UK 
• James Hetherington, University College London, UK 
• Fred J. Hickernell, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA 
• Caroline Jay, University of Manchester, UK 
• Rafael C. Jimenez, ELIXER, Cambridge, UK 
• Matthew B. Jones, University of California Santa Barbara, USA 
• Nick Jones, New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI), NZ 
• Jong-Suk Ruth Lee, National Institute of Supercomputing and Networking, KISTI (Korea Institute 
of Science and Technology Information), Korea 
• Sedef Akinli Kocak, Ryerson University, Canada 
• James Lin, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China 
• Frank Löffler, Louisiana State University, USA 
• Gregory Madey, University of Notre Dame, USA 
• Ketan Maheshwari, University of Pittsburgh, USA 
• Steven Manos, University of Melbourne, Australia 
• Chris A. Mattmann, NASA JPL & University of Southern California, USA 
• Abigail Cabunoc Mayes, Mozilla Science Lab, USA 
• Robert H. McDonald, Indiana University, USA 
• Lois Curfman McInnes, Argonne National Laboratory, USA 
• Chris Mentzel, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, USA 
• Peter Murray-Rust, University of Cambridge, UK 
• Christopher R. Myers, Cornell University, USA 
• Jarek Nabrzyski, University of Notre Dame, USA 
• Cameron Neylon, Curtin University, Australia 
• Aleksandra Pawlik, New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI), NZ 
• Fernando Perez, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory & University of California, Berkeley, USA 
• Marian Petre, The Open University, UK 
• Marlon Pierce, Indiana University, USA 
• Andreas Prlic, University of California, San Diego, USA 
• Karthik Ram, University of California, Berkeley, USA 
• Morris Riedel, Juelich Supercomputing Centre, Germany 
• Norbert Seyff, University of Zurich, Switzerland 
• Arfon Smith, GitHub Inc, USA 
• Borja Sotomayor, University of Chicago, USA 
• Edgar Spalding, University of Wisconsin, USA 
• Maria Spichkova, RMIT University, Australia 
• Victoria Stodden, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA 
• Matthew Turk, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA 
• Ewout van den Berg, IBM Watson, USA 
• Nancy Wilkins-Diehr, San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California, San Diego, USA 
• James Willenbring, Sandia National Laboratories, USA 
• Scott Wilson, Cetis LLP, UK 
• Theresa Windus, Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory, USA