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In computational science and engineering, Better Scientific Software (commonly abbreviated as BSSw and hosted at bssw.io) is an international community platform and knowledge hub dedicated to improving developer productivity and software sustainability across research institutions. Distinct from the social work degree acronym (BSSW), the BSSw platform provides curated resources, practical guides, and fellowship funding to advance the practices of researchers and developers who write and maintain scientific software.
Modern scientific discovery depends on software that ranges from individual analysis scripts to multi-institutional codebases running at leadership computing facilities. Addressing the challenges of maintainability, performance portability, and computational reproducibility requires disciplined software engineering in research. BSSw organizes community expertise into structured educational pathways, enabling research groups to establish reliable engineering baselines without reinventing development workflows from scratch.
What Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Is
BSSw is a centralized, collaborative portal that collects, creates, and curates materials on software engineering practices tailored specifically for computational science and engineering (CSE). Unlike generic commercial software engineering hubs, BSSw focuses on the distinct operational realities of scientific code, including high-performance computing (HPC) architectures, complex mathematical and physical models, long software lifecycles, and multidisciplinary research teams.
The platform operates primarily through two core mechanisms: instructional materials (including concise “WhatIs” characterizations and “HowTo” procedural documents) and the BSSw Fellowship Program. All content published on the site is released openly under the permissive MIT License, ensuring that academic institutions, national laboratories, and independent research groups can adapt and redistribute resources freely.
Who Operates BSSw and What It Covers
BSSw was established under the umbrella of the Interoperable Design of Extreme-scale Application Software (IDEAS) project, initiated through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Exascale Computing Project (ECP) alongside partnerships with the National Science Foundation (NSF). The site is maintained by an editorial board of computational scientists and research software engineers across national laboratories and universities, operating under the Contributor Covenant (version 1.2.0) Code of Conduct.
Resources on BSSw are cataloged across six overarching core categories, each addressing a critical phase of the scientific software lifecycle:
- Better Planning: Focuses on requirements gathering, architectural design, software process improvement, software sustainability strategies, and user experience (UX) design for scientific software tools.
- Better Development: Encompasses documentation standards, configuration and build systems (such as CMake and Autotools), revision control workflows using Git, release management, issue tracking, programming language best practices (e.g., C++, Fortran, Python), refactoring, and AI-assisted development tools.
- Better Performance: Covers high-performance computing (HPC) optimization, performance profiling at leadership computing facilities, performance portability across CPU and GPU hardware architectures, cloud computing for research, and big data processing pipelines.
- Better Reliability: Focuses on peer code review protocols, automated unit and regression testing, continuous integration (CI) testing on specialized hardware, debugging techniques, and verifiable methods for computational reproducibility infrastructure.
- Better Collaboration: Details team governance, open-source licensing models, software publishing and persistent citation, funding opportunities, and community engagement for research software teams.
- Better Skills: Aggregates online learning curricula, in-person training events, and strategies for personal productivity and professional development in research computing.
How to Use and Navigate BSSw Resources
Researchers and technical computing teams interact with BSSw through three primary pathways depending on their project lifecycle and immediate operational needs:
- Topic Exploration: Users can browse curated resource tracks organized by the six core categories or filter resources by specific subtopics such as continuous integration, CMake, or license selection.
- Direct Problem Solving with WhatIs and HowTo Guides: When evaluating a new development tool or refactoring an existing codebase, researchers utilize standalone “WhatIs” briefs to assess tool utility and “HowTo” documents for step-by-step implementation practices.
- Community Event and Learning Tracking: The platform maintains an active event calendar listing upcoming conferences, webinars, tutorials, and training workshops relevant to high-performance computing and scientific software sustainability.
Contributing Content to BSSw
BSSw relies on peer contributions from the scientific computing community. Submissions are managed via open pull requests on the public GitHub repository (betterscientificsoftware/betterscientificsoftware.github.io) and undergo formal editorial review before publication. To maintain quality and relevance, the platform defines three specific submission formats and strict scope boundaries:
| Content Format | Length and Scope | Primary Purpose | Editorial Criteria |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original Blog | 500 to 1,500 words | Thought leadership, community announcements, project retrospectives, or deep-dive technical explorations. | Must demonstrate clear relevance to CSE developer productivity or software sustainability; concise style. |
| Curated Content | Brief article with external links | Highlights an external tool, web resource, book, standard, or organization of value to scientific computing. | Must articulate specifically why CSE developers benefit from the resource and address ease of adoption. |
| Event Notice | Short summary and registration link | Announces workshops, tutorials, conferences, or webinars relevant to research software practices. | Must be open to the community and focused on high-quality scientific software education. |
The platform explicitly screens for scope: materials must address challenges that overlap with computational science and engineering (such as parallel programming models, numerical accuracy, or extreme-scale architectures). Specialized tools serving only a narrow subfield without broader engineering lessons, as well as generic IT software lacking scientific computing relevance, are excluded from the catalog.
The BSSw Fellowship Program
The BSSw Fellowship Program provides recognition and direct financial support to individuals who champion software sustainability and developer productivity in scientific communities. Co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), the program fosters leadership and advocacy within the computational research ecosystem.
Key parameters of the fellowship program include:
- Award Amount: Each selected fellow receives up to $25,000 to execute an approved project over a one-year tenure.
- Institutional Mechanism: Funding is disbursed directly through the fellow’s home institution. Eligible institutions include U.S.-based entities qualified to receive federal awards, encompassing national laboratories, universities, and commercial organizations.
- Public Artifact Deliverables: Fellows are required to produce tangible, publicly accessible artifacts that benefit the broader community. Typical deliverables include organizing open workshops, delivering training tutorials, authoring guidebooks, or publishing educational materials deposited in open repositories such as Zenodo or GitHub.
- Applicant Diversity: Applications are open to researchers, practitioners, and RSEs across all career stages, from graduate students through senior laboratory scientists.
- Alumni Network: Upon completing the fellowship year, fellows join the BSSw Fellowship Alumni community, where they participate in evaluating future applicant cohorts, mentoring emerging leaders, and shaping community software standards.
Platform Strengths and Limitations
BSSw offers distinct institutional advantages while operating under specific structural boundaries:
Strengths
- Curated Scientific Context: Unlike generic developer portals (such as Stack Overflow or generic software blogs), BSSw curates content specifically addressing MPI, Fortran, multi-node scaling, and hardware acceleration in scientific simulations.
- Cross-Agency Sponsorship: Joint backing from the DOE and NSF provides sustained institutional credibility and alignment with federal research computing directives.
- Community Governance: The transparent GitHub-backed editorial model ensures that materials reflect practical consensus from practicing computational scientists.
- Synergy with Standards: Platform guidance aligns closely with international principles, including the FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS) principles for software findability and citation.
Limitations
- Federal Funding Restrictions on Fellowships: While all web materials are accessible globally, BSSw Fellowship funding is categorically restricted to applicants affiliated with U.S.-based institutions capable of receiving federal subawards.
- Static Curation Model: The platform functions as an asynchronous knowledge base and editorial portal rather than an interactive question-and-answer forum or real-time support helpdesk.
- Asynchronous Peer Review: Because submissions undergo editorial review through GitHub pull requests, updates and additions depend on volunteer and editor review bandwidth.
Related Scientific Software Initiatives
BSSw operates alongside several complementary organizations and initiatives dedicated to research computing and software quality:
| Organization or Platform | Primary Mission | Relationship to BSSw |
|---|---|---|
| IDEAS Productivity Project | Multi-institutional DOE project focused on advancing software productivity for extreme-scale computing. | Parent initiative that launched and maintains the BSSw portal and fellowship logistics. |
| Extreme-scale Scientific Software Development Kit (xSDK) | Coordinated collection of numerical libraries and domain packages engineered for interoperability on HPC systems. | Partner DOE initiative under IDEAS that implements concrete software quality and build interoperability standards. |
| Research Software Engineering (RSE) Associations (US-RSE, Society of RSE) | Professional associations advocating for career paths, recognition, and professional standards for research coders. | Collaborating community whose members author BSSw guides, hold fellowships, and contribute to editorial curation. |
| Research Data Alliance (RDA) FAIR4RS Working Group | International working group defining principles for making research software Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. | Complementary standards body whose recommendations are referenced and disseminated through BSSw instructional materials. |
Frequently Asked Questions
What does BSSw stand for?
BSSw stands for Better Scientific Software, an initiative focused on improving software engineering practices, developer productivity, and code sustainability in computational science and engineering. It is distinct from the academic degree abbreviation BSSW (Bachelor of Science in Social Work).
Who can apply for a BSSw Fellowship?
Applicants must be affiliated with a U.S.-based institution capable of receiving federal grants and contracts, including U.S. national laboratories, universities, and corporations. Candidates from all career stages (students, early-career, mid-career, and senior specialists) are eligible.
What does a BSSw Fellow deliver?
Fellows receive up to $25,000 to deliver an open, publicly available community artifact within one year. Examples include organizing hands-on tutorials, developing reusable training curricula, authoring reference guides, or conducting community-wide software workshops.
How can an international researcher contribute to BSSw?
While direct fellowship funding is limited to U.S.-affiliated institutions due to federal funding rules, international researchers are actively encouraged to contribute original blogs, curated resource entries, and event notices via GitHub pull requests.
Under what license are BSSw materials published?
Content on the BSSw platform is licensed under the permissive MIT License, allowing research teams, academic institutions, and commercial organizations to reuse, adapt, and distribute the materials with attribution.
Sources
- Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Portal Overview. bssw.io/pages/site-overview (URL verified 2026-11-08).
- BSSw Fellowship Program Guidelines and FAQ. bssw.io/pages/bssw-fellowship-program and bssw.io/pages/bssw-fellowship-faq (URLs verified 2026-11-08).
- BSSw Content Submission Guidelines and Scope. bssw.io/pages/what-to-contribute-content-for-better-scientific-software (URL verified 2026-11-08).
- IDEAS Productivity Project Overview. ideas-productivity.org (URL verified 2026-11-08).
- Better Scientific Software GitHub Repository Metadata. api.github.com/repos/betterscientificsoftware/betterscientificsoftware.github.io (URL verified 2026-11-08).
- BSSw Code of Conduct and Policies. bssw.io/pages/policies (URL verified 2026-11-08).
