Understanding Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Challenges Within the Research Software Community

TL;DR

This paper analyzes diversity challenges in the research software community, highlighting current gaps, potential interventions, and lessons for fostering inclusive, collaborative environments in research software development.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence of diversity issues in the research software community and proposes targeted interventions to improve inclusion and representation.

Findings

Evidence of lack of diversity in the community

Identification of effective interventions for inclusion

Community becoming more diverse in certain areas

Abstract

Research software -- specialist software used to support or undertake research -- is of huge importance to researchers. It contributes to significant advances in the wider world and requires collaboration between people with diverse skills and backgrounds. Analysis of recent survey data provides evidence for a lack of diversity in the Research Software Engineer community. We identify interventions which could address challenges in the wider research software community and highlight areas where the community is becoming more diverse. There are also lessons that are applicable, more generally, to the field of software development around recruitment from other disciplines and the importance of welcoming communities.