Uncovering Scientific Software Sustainability through Community Engagement and Software Quality Metrics

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07851v1
• Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2025 01:23:59 GMT
• Title: Uncovering Scientific Software Sustainability through Community Engagement and Software Quality Metrics
• Authors: Sharif Ahmed, Addi Malviya Thakur, Gregory R. Watson, Nasir U. Eisty,
• Abstract summary: This paper explores the sustainability of scientific open-source software (Sci-OSS) projects hosted on GitHub.<n>We map sustainability to repository metrics from the literature and mined data from ten prominent Sci-OSS projects.<n>Our visualization and analysis methods offer researchers, funders, and developers key insights into long-term software sustainability.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Scientific open-source software (Sci-OSS) projects are critical for advancing research, yet sustaining these projects long-term remains a major challenge. This paper explores the sustainability of Sci-OSS hosted on GitHub, focusing on two factors drawn from stewardship organizations: community engagement and software quality. We map sustainability to repository metrics from the literature and mined data from ten prominent Sci-OSS projects. A multimodal analysis of these projects led us to a novel visualization technique, providing a robust way to display both current and evolving software metrics over time, replacing multiple traditional visualizations with one. Additionally, our statistical analysis shows that even similar-domain projects sustain themselves differently. Natural language analysis supports claims from the literature, highlighting that project-specific feedback plays a key role in maintaining software quality. Our visualization and analysis methods offer researchers, funders, and developers key insights into long-term software sustainability.

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