Seek and You Shall Find - Or Not! Why Can't We Find the Research Software We Really Need?

Authors

  • Ronny Gey Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ
  • Tim Wittenborg L3S Research Center
  • Alexander Struck Cluster of Excellence Matters of Activity. Image Space Material at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1173-9228
  • Daniel Mietchen FIZ Karlsruhe — Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9488-1870
  • Oliver Karras TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5336-6899

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14279/eceasst.v85.2712

Keywords:

information retrieval, information seeking, research software, FAIR, findability

Abstract

Research software plays a pivotal role in today's research, whether as a result or as a facilitator of research processes. Therefore, it is very important for researchers to find suitable research software for their research project. We develop scenarios for searching research software in this paper, as well as personas that act as research software discoverers. We then categorize various discovery pathways for research software and analyzed them according to relevant search criteria. Our results show a very heterogeneous landscape of discovery pathways and a lack of metadata and filtering options.

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Published

2025-12-15

How to Cite

[1]
R. Gey, T. Wittenborg, A. Struck, D. Mietchen, and O. Karras, “Seek and You Shall Find - Or Not! Why Can’t We Find the Research Software We Really Need?”, ECEASST, vol. 85, Dec. 2025.

Issue

Vol. 85 (2025): deRSE25 - Selected Contributions of the 5th Conference for Research Software Engineering in Germany

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Ronny Gey, Tim Wittenborg, Alexander Struck, Daniel Mietchen, Oliver Karras

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.