These guides include information on why, when and how to start communities of practice as well as information for managers on how to manage research software projects, write grants involving research software development. We have guides on how to publish about research software and make cases for RSEs, as well as choosing and dealing with licensing and managing data.

Community building

• Starting a community - taking your software to the world - Whether for research, administration, learning or teaching, software is an increasingly valuable tool and output, and needs to be managed as such. Starting a community is an important step in software sustainability.

• Building a better community - Building a community around software is an important step for its sustainability. An active community can become self-supporting: answering queries raised by community members and contributing new functionality and bug fixes back to your project.  

• Recruiting champions for your project - Promoting your software is vital if you want to increase its use and generate interest in your research. Rather than singing the praises of your own software, it is often more persuasive to have a satisfied user spread the word for you.  

• Recruiting student developers - It's frustrating when you have an idea for improving your software, but lack the resources needed to realise it. Not all is lost! Your idea might be the perfect basis for a student project.

• Event Organisation Guide - In this guide, you will find different stages of the event organisation process from idea through feasibility, sign off, running your event project and then closing down. The work covers in person workshop organisation, giving hints and tips on varied subjects such as venue, catering, budget, agenda, publicity and much more.

Data

• How does software fit into EPSRC’s research data policy? - This guide explains how software fits with the EPSRC policy framework for research data.Our thanks to the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) for providing links to these guides. The DCC is a world-leading centre of expertise in digital information curation with a focus on building capacity, capability and skills for research data management across the UK's higher education research community.

• How to develop a data management and sharing plan - Planning for the effective creation, management and sharing of your data enables you to get the most out of your work, ensures that you bear in mind the wider context and consequences of different options, and helps make the research process easier.

• How can you make research data fully accessible? – A guide designed to guide through the steps you should consider before sharing your research data. 

Funding

• How to fund research software development - Research grants generally can't help with the costs of improving code. Who should you turn to instead?

• How to write a case for funding a software developer - This guide helps you to make the case for funding a software developer, define their duties, gather evidence of your software’s impact and reassure funders that its benefits go far beyond your project.  

Licences

• How to license research data - There are so many useful resources on the web when it comes to open-source licensing that it can be confusing. This guide highlights the best resources that provide clear information about choosing a licence for software.

Research and repository infrastructure

• Best practice for funding the use of cloud in research - This guide for funders, senior managers and research directors will help you to assess requests for funding for cloud computing resources; assess requests to provision cloud infrastructures; and to provision shared cloud computing infrastructures to researchers across a range of institutions.

• Software deposit guidance - Depositing software into digital repositories can offer many benefits to both researchers and the research community. This collection of guides covers important aspects of software deposit including why researchers should deposit software, when and where to deposit software and how to choose a software licence.deposit including why researchers should deposit software, when and where to deposit software and how to choose a software licence.

Event organisation

• A Guide on Recording Screencasts, Online Training and Events and Live Streaming - a guide on planning and processing recordings of online sessions.
• Event Organisation Guide