New CACM paper on RSE Research

New paper in Communications of the ACM

Felderer, M., Goedicke, M., Grunske, L., Hasselbring, W., Lamprecht, A. L. and Rumpe, B. (2025) “Investigating Research Software Engineering: Toward RSE Research.” Communications of the ACM, 68(2). pp. 20-23. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/3685265

Teaser video: https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/investigating-research-software-engineering-toward-rse-research/

Abstract

Research software is software that is designed and developed to support research activities. It can be used to collect, process, analyze, and visualize data, as well as to model complex phenomena and run sophisticated simulations. Research software is developed by researchers themselves or by software developers working closely with researchers. Research software is typically developed to meet specific research needs, and it often has unique requirements that are different from standard commercial software.

Research software engineering (RSE) and the related role of research software engineer has emerged as a job profile in its own right. We highlight the concept of research software engineering research - RSE research in short - as a complementary approach to RSE: conducting research on understanding and improving how software is developed for research. To set the stage, we start with a look at 50 years of software engineering research, and introduce the characteristics of research software, RSE in general, RSE research, and conclude with an outlook to further essential activities on RSE research.