Abstract
Software has become an indissociable support of technical and scientific knowledge. The preservation of this universal body of knowledge is as essential as preserving research articles and data sets. In the quest to make scientific results reproducible, and pass knowledge to future generations, we must preserve these three main pillars: research articles that describe the results, the data sets used or produced, and the software that embodies the logic of the data transformation.
 The collaboration between Software Heritage (SWH), the Center for Direct Scientific Communication (CCSD) and the scientific and technical information services (IES) of The French Institute for Research in Computer Science and Automation (Inria) has resulted in a specified moderation and curation workflow for research software artifacts deposited in the HAL the French global open access repository. The curation workflow was developed to help digital librarians and archivists handle this new and peculiar artifact - software source code. While implementing the workflow, a set of guidelines has emerged from the challenges and the solutions put in place to help all actors involved in the process.
Highlights
Modern research relies on software, but it has only gained recognition recently
Software is still too often considered as just data, even though data is gathered through observations or experiments, whereas software is a product of human ingenuity, written by authors and contributors, and embodying the logic of the data transformation
The SWORD 2.0 (Jones and Lewis, 2013) implementation provides the technical interface between a client (HAL) and a server (SWH) to push deposits of software source code with associated metadata, available on the API documentation (Software Heritage Development team, 2017)
Summary
Modern research relies on software, but it has only gained recognition recently. While strategies for articles and even data preservation are already the norm, software is still a unique artifact for which it is rare to find dedicated deposits and preservation mechanisms in institutional repositories (Milliken, 2019). The HAL moderation process only verifies the accuracy of the descriptive information regarding a deposited software source code artifact and the accuracy of its attribution.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call