New dimension: Community #120
Description
According to the text in the reference framework, there is a new proposal for "Community":
2.5 Community
Research software development and maintenance increasingly depend on active communities of contributors, users, and stakeholders. A thriving community can compensate for technical limitations, ensure long-term viability [OVERLAP: Sustainability], and drive innovation through collaborative development. For research software, community engagement takes on particular importance due to the distributed nature of research collaborations, the need for domain-specific expertise, and the challenges of sustaining software beyond individual research projects [OVERLAP: Sustainability].
Community health encompasses the social and organisational structures that enable effective collaboration, knowledge sharing, and decision-making around research software. This includes governance models [OVERLAP: Sustainability], contributor engagement patterns, communication channels [OVERLAP: Sustainability], and the coordination processes that facilitate participation across diverse stakeholder groups. The significance of community aspects varies by software tier - analysis code may have a single author with minimal community interaction, while research software infrastructure requires structured community governance and broad stakeholder engagement.
Community aspects overlap with sustainability and open source dimensions, as healthy communities directly contribute to long-term software viability [OVERLAP: Sustainability] and align with open source development practices [OVERLAP: Open Source Software]. Despite this overlap, community merits explicit attention as it captures critical social dynamics that determine whether research software achieves adoption, maintains quality, and evolves to meet changing research needs.
Key aspects of community health for research software include:
Community engagement and participation
Possible indicators:
"has active contributors beyond core maintainers" [OVERLAP: Open Source Software - contributor practices]
"responds to issues and pull requests within defined timeframes" [OVERLAP: Sustainability - support processes]
"documents contribution activity publicly" [OVERLAP: Open Source Software - transparency]
"shows growth or stability in user and contributor base"
Governance structures and processes [OVERLAP: Sustainability - governance processes]
Possible indicators:
"governance model is documented and publicly accessible" [OVERLAP: Open Source Software - decision-making practices]
"decision-making processes are transparent" [OVERLAP: Open Source Software]
"roles and responsibilities are clearly defined"
"succession planning exists for key roles" [OVERLAP: Sustainability]
Communication channels and practices [OVERLAP: Sustainability - project communication]
Possible indicators:
"maintains active communication channels (mailing lists, forums, chat)" [OVERLAP: Open Source Software - community interaction platforms]
"provides clear pathways for users to get support" [OVERLAP: Sustainability - support processes]
"documents decisions and discussions publicly" [OVERLAP: Open Source Software]
"communicates releases and major changes effectively"
Community health metrics
Possible indicators:
"tracks community health using established frameworks (e.g., CHAOSS metrics)"
"monitors contributor diversity and inclusion"
"measures user engagement and satisfaction"
"identifies and addresses community bottlenecks" [OVERLAP: Sustainability - project health]
Integration with research communities
Possible indicators:
"engages with domain-specific research communities"
"participates in relevant conferences and workshops"
"maintains connections with related projects" [OVERLAP: FAIR - Interoperability, Open Source Software - OSS ecosystem integration]
"facilitates knowledge exchange across research groups" [OVERLAP: FAIR - Reusability]
The CHAOSS (Community Health Analytics Open Source Software) project provides comprehensive frameworks for measuring community health, including 21 software-specific metrics that can be adapted for research software contexts. These metrics offer valuable insights into community sustainability [OVERLAP: Sustainability], contributor activity, and project health that complement traditional software quality measures.
Should we include this dimension?