OntoSoft: A Software Commons for Geosciences

Abstract:

The goal of the EarthCube OntoSoft project is to enable the creation of a germinal ecosystem for software stewardship in geosciences that will empower scientists to manage their software as valuable scientific assets in an open transparent mode that enables broader access to that software by other scientists, software professionals, students, and decision makers. Our work to date includes: 1) an ontology for describing scientific software metadata, 2) a scientific software repository that contains more than 600 entries that can be searched and compared across metadata fields, 3) an intelligent user interface that guides scientists to publish software. We have also developed a training program where scientists learn to describe and cite software in their papers in addition to data and provenance. This training program is part of a Geoscience Papers of the Future Initiative, where scientists learn as they are writing a journal paper that can be submitted to a Special Section of the AGU Earth and Space Science Journal.