Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A researcher who authored a Python package, released it under MIT with a Zenodo DOI, and maintains it with a CITATION.cff file
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A one-off analysis script emailed to a colleague is not open-software contribution in the citable sense
Editorial commentary
Recognised through software citations (with DOI via Zenodo or Software Heritage), CRediT ‘Software’, and increasingly through Research Software Engineer (RSE) career frameworks. The contribution may be acknowledged at the level of a release (citation to the software) or at the level of an individual commit (CITATION.cff with contributor list).
References
- Smith et al. 2016 ‘Software Citation Principles’ PeerJ Computer Science
- FORCE11 Software Citation Implementation Working Group (2020)
Also known as
Research software contribution · RSE contribution
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
xml
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Open-software contribution"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-software-contribution" />json
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"name": "Open-software contribution",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-software-contribution",
"description": "The development, documentation, packaging, testing, or maintenance of research software released under an open-source licence, including authoring new code, contributing to existing projects, releasing reusable libraries, or operating long-term maintenance.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/credit-extensions-and-adjacent-contribution-vocabularies/",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/open-software-contribution",
"sameAs": [
"Research software contribution",
"RSE contribution"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}
