This is most of a proposal that was submitted to and is being funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation PROJECT GOAL The work to be done in this policy project will address the question of "How can policy be used to increase the sustainability and impact of research software in the scholarly research community?" OBJECTIVES The project has three objectives: 1) making positive policy changes, 2) understanding why such changes succeed and fail in this context, and 3) planning for future policy work

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... based on these lessons. PROPOSED ACTIVITIES This project will hire a postdoc to work with the PI to accomplish the project tasks over two years: 1. Assemble and maintain a list of potential policy activities (with elements of both policy research and policy advocacy) and the effort required for each 2. Accomplish some number (9 are initially planned) of these policy activities. 3. Document the lessons from these policy activities and using this to plan and propose an expanded and improved research policy center EXPECTED PRODUCTS 1) List of potential policy activities; 2) documentation about the lessons from accomplished policy activities and plan for an expanded and improved research policy center; 3) documented existing career paths for individuals creating research software; 4) communications list for those interested in career paths; 5) documents on starting and running URSSI chapters, and 3 such chapters; 6) documented examples of successful use of individual contributions to public goods to gain academic promotion; 7) documented examples of reviewers prioritizing grant proposals that reuse and contribute back to maintenance of public infrastructure; 8) documented cases of discovery where software was particularly fundamental; 9) tweets, blog posts and editorials based on these cases; 10) public living summary of funding opportunities for software maintenance; 11) updated DISCOVER event cookbook EXPECTED OUTCOMES This project will make progress towards: 1) Establishing career paths (including titles and eva [...]