4 ms·

I would say that you should look at what stage you are in your career and what your goals are. If your goal is to become research faculty, you should focus on

by ylem 14y ago

I would say that you should look at what stage you are in your career and what your goals are. If your goal is to become research faculty, you should focus on getting high impact papers out of the door--software is a tool for helping you do so. If you find yourself re-using that bit of code, then it may be worth cleaning it up and making it maintainable. If people start sending you requests for it, then it may be worthwhile open sourcing it, documenting it, maintaining it, etc.--but only if you have time. I do make open source scientific software as part of my job, but I'm at a later stage in my career and it's not something I would have a science postdoc work on--it's just not fair to them and their career prospects within science... Recently, someone asked for some reduction code that I've developed and I realized that while it was documented, I didn't have time to refactor it and clean it up--finally, I just put it on github and told them to contact me if they had questions--they were happy to have it as a starting point for what they wanted to work on. So, if you believe that you've made something worthwhile, but don't have the bandwidth to maintain it and other people might find it useful, sometimes it might be better to just put it out there and let people play with it--no guarantees, but it may help someone else get started... You can get a large number of citations in some subfields for writing commonly used software--but it may or may not help your career. For example, I have friends at various institutions around the world that tell me that their management gives them no credit for developing useful software (complete with lectures, updates, documentation, etc.)--they just release it because they feel they should and most of them are also already tenured in their positions. Good luck!!!

michaelbarton 14y ago
I am the original author. Thank you for writing this. I wish I had known this six years ago. I am coming to the end of my first post doc and I wish I had just done the minimum work to get it published. I could have then used the extra free time to work on finishing other manuscripts. I am especially feeling this pinch now as apply for jobs. I also strongly agree with your other point about just making it open source and if anyone needs it they can get download it and ask you questions.
_delirium 14y ago
I agree there's little direct credit given for developing software, but it can be helpful for early-career researchers to gain name recognition. Even if nobody knows your actual work, if you wrote some software lots of people use, it makes people feel like they know you from somewhere. Admittedly, it's tricky to do, since that name recognition only really matters if you can also manage to publish enough papers. Realistically grad school is more likely for that than during a postdoc or as an assistant professor. Some grad students manage to release some widely used software (well, usually "widely" in a particular niche), which I think does help them build up more prominence than someone in their career stage might otherwise have had. On a different angle, having produced some reasonably decent software can be a nice thing to have in your back pocket if you ever consider moving to industry. Having N papers and one decent software package is probably a better academia-to-industry transition CV than N+2 papers and no software packages.
- michaelbarton 14y ago
  I agree that producing a piece of software many people use is great for your career. I think, on average, most software is never downloaded or used. So, given this prior, is it a good investment of my time to flesh-out documentation and examples rather than just enough to get it published?

by ylem 14y ago

michaelbarton 14y ago

I am the original author. Thank you for writing this. I wish I had known this six years ago. I am coming to the end of my first post doc and I wish I had just done the minimum work to get it published. I could have then used the extra free time to work on finishing other manuscripts. I am especially feeling this pinch now as apply for jobs. I also strongly agree with your other point about just making it open source and if anyone needs it they can get download it and ask you questions.

_delirium 14y ago

I agree there's little direct credit given for developing software, but it can be helpful for early-career researchers to gain name recognition. Even if nobody knows your actual work, if you wrote some software lots of people use, it makes people feel like they know you from somewhere. Admittedly, it's tricky to do, since that name recognition only really matters if you can also manage to publish enough papers. Realistically grad school is more likely for that than during a postdoc or as an assistant professor. Some grad students manage to release some widely used software (well, usually "widely" in a particular niche), which I think does help them build up more prominence than someone in their career stage might otherwise have had. On a different angle, having produced some reasonably decent software can be a nice thing to have in your back pocket if you ever consider moving to industry. Having N papers and one decent software package is probably a better academia-to-industry transition CV than N+2 papers and no software packages.

michaelbarton 14y ago
I agree that producing a piece of software many people use is great for your career. I think, on average, most software is never downloaded or used. So, given this prior, is it a good investment of my time to flesh-out documentation and examples rather than just enough to get it published?