Building an open-source future for scientific discovery

The world is changing rapidly every day, and today’s challenges require us to work together to quickly find new solutions. In the world of computing, open-source software has revolutionized how work can get done, with engineers building on top of projects maintained by active communities, rather than work they have to rebuild every time.

In science, however, much of the technical work that a team produces for a given piece of research ends when the project does. But solving the problems facing the world will require scientists to come together. Today, IBM is partnering with NumFOCUS, an organization that promotes open science research, to launch Open-Source Science (OSSci), a top-level NumFOCUS initiative prioritizing open-source software development to accelerate scientific discovery.

OSSci will be focused on identifying the needs of researchers contributing to and using open-source science projects, and filling in gaps in existing software. Primarily, OSSci’s work will focus on chemistry, biology, materials discovery, climate mitigation, and health care, where questions are complex and scientific discovery is the goal.

To learn more about work OSSci will carry out, or to sign up to join communities of discovery in your area of research, head to opensource.science for an invitation to join.