Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
research software sustainability
FAIR principles
environmental responsibility
software security
fitness function
Beyond FAIR: A Fitness Function Framework for Sustainable Research Software
🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the limitation that existing FAIR principles do not encompass environmental responsibility and long-term security in research software, resulting in resource waste and maintenance burdens. To overcome this gap, this work extends the fitness function framework by incorporating environmental efficiency and security-health dimensions into a continuous evaluation system for the first time. By quantitatively monitoring resource footprints, dependency health, and vulnerability exposure, we construct a multidimensional sustainability assessment model that integrates FAIR principles with environmental and security considerations. This model enables systematic measurement of both the ecological benefits and security risks associated with research software, thereby providing a comprehensive approach to evaluating software sustainability beyond traditional data-centric criteria.
📝 Abstract
Research software sustainability is often assessed through the FAIR principles: findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability. While important, FAIR does not cover all relevant sustainability concerns. Research software should also be environmentally responsible and secure over time. Excessive resource consumption increases environmental cost, while insecure software creates maintenance overhead, technical debt and barriers to reuse. To this end, in this paper, we extend a previously proposed fitness function framework for sustainable research software beyond FAIR. We introduce two additional sets of fitness functions: environmental functions targeting resource efficiency and execution footprint, and security functions targeting dependency health, vulnerability exposure and secure configuration. Together, these functions broaden continuous software assessment from FAIR compliance to a more complete view of sustainability. The resulting framework treats research software sustainability as a multidimensional property that includes FAIR, environmental responsibility and long-term security.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Research Software Sustainability
Fitness Function Framework
FAIR Principles
Environmental Responsibility
Software Security
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