Information sheet

Introduction

I am Sorrel Harriet, a fellow of the Software Sustainability Institute working for Leeds Trinity University. I am doing research on project management processes adopted by academics developing software for research purposes. I am going to give you information and invite you to be part of this research. You do not have to decide today whether or not you will participate in the research. Before you decide, you can talk to anyone you feel comfortable with about the research. This information sheet may contain words that you do not understand. Please contact me if you would like me to explain anything in more detail (see ‘Who to contact’ section).

Purpose of the research

Research is increasingly software dependent across all stages in the project life cycle, from the acquisition and management of data to its analysis and presentation. Academics across all disciplines are increasingly engaging in software development to varying degrees. At the same time it is recognised that the quality and openness of the software has implications for the reproducability, integrity and impact of the research. Effort is therefore being made to support academics in adopting best practices with respect to the development and sharing of research software.

This study seeks to map the organisational structures and management processes adopted by academics and Research Software Engineers (RSEs) on small-large scale research software projects. The primary goal will be to gain a deeper understanding of common problems linked to process and develop recommendations that are sensitive to different organisational structures.

Type of research intervention

This research will involve your participation in a one-to-one interview with the principal investigator (Sorrel Harriet) and will take about one hour.

Participant selection

You are being invited to take part in this research because we feel that your experience as an academic or Research Software Engineer (RSE) can contribute much to our understanding and knowledge of project management processes in academia.

Voluntary participation

Your participation in this research is entirely voluntary. It is your choice whether to participate or not.

Should you wish to participate in the study you reserve the right to withdraw at any time without needing to give a reason (see section on ‘Right to refuse or withdraw’). This would result in the complete removal of your unpublished response data from our records. However, any data that had already been published at the time that consent was withdrawn would remain in the public domain.

Procedures

We are asking you to help us learn more about software project management processes in the academic research context. We are inviting you to take part in this research project. If you accept, you will be asked to participate in a one-to-one interview either in person at an agreed location, or over a video conferencing platform.

During the interview, I will sit down with you in a secure and comfortable place at your institution. If it is better for you, the interview can take place at Leeds Trinity University, in your home, or over a secure video conferencing platform (Zoom). If you do not wish to answer any of the questions during the interview, you may say so and the interviewer will move on to the next question. No one else but the interviewer will be present unless you would like someone else to be there. The information recorded is confidential, and no one else will have access to the information documented during your interview. The entire interview will be recorded, but no-one will be identified by name on the recording. The recording will be made on a password protected voice recorder containing an SD card and will be transferred to a secure cloud server shortly after the interview has taken place. It will be stored encrypted on the cloud server and deleted from the SD card. The information recorded is confidential, and no one else except myself and IT Services at Leeds Trinity University will have access to the recordings. The recordings will later be transcribed to text and then deleted. The transcribing and deletion of recorded information will take place within 6 weeks. The transcribed information may then be held encrypted on secure cloud servers for up to 10 years following the publication of any papers associated with the data. Should no publications result, the data will be deleted after 2 years.

Please refer to the About the interviews page for a detailed explanation of the interview format and the types of questions that will be asked.

Duration

The research will be conducted over a 15 month period commencing July 2019-September 2020. During that time you will be asked to give a single 1 hour interview. You will also be invited to attend a follow-up workshop in which a summary of key findings from the interviews will be open for discussion. It is entirely up to you whether or not you attend the follow-up workshop.

Risk

We are asking you to share with us some personal and potentially confidential information. You may feel uncomfortable talking about some of the topics. You do not have to answer any question if you don’t wish to do so. You do not have to give us any reason for not responding to any question, or for refusing to take part in the interview.

There is a risk that you may share some personal or confidential information by chance. If that happens you can ask that the information be disregarded (i.e. struck from the record), skip the question, or withdraw from the interview.

However, we shall make every effort to protect the identity and reputation of participants in the reporting of information derived from the interviews. See the proceeding section on ‘Confidentiality’ for more information.

Confidentiality

This research is being done for the benefit of the academic community and may be of interest to people you know. We will not be sharing information about you to anyone outside of the research team. The information that we collect from this research project will be kept private. Any information about you will have a number on it instead of your name. Only the researchers will know what your number is and we will keep that information on a secure server which will not be accessible to anyone except the principal investigator and the IT Services team at Leeds Trinity University.

If, after the interview, you become worried that confidential information was inadvertantly disclosed, you are welcome to contact me to make corrections.

In addition, we shall make every effort in our reporting of the information you share with us to preserve the anonymity of your institution and any research projects you discuss during the interview.

How we preserve anonymity

Benefits

There will be no direct benefit to you, but your participation is likely to help us find out more about how to help the academic software development community.

Reimbursements

You will not be provided any incentive to take part in the research. However, we will give you your travel expenses up to a maximum value of £100 should you prefer to attend the interview at the host institution (Leeds Trinity University).

Sharing the results

Nothing that you tell us today will be shared with anybody outside the research team, and nothing will be attributed to you by name. The knowledge that we get from this research will be shared with you and your community before it is made widely available to the public. Each participant will receive a summary of the results. There will also be a workshop-style meeting in the community which will be announced. Following the workshop meeting, we will publish the results so that other interested people may learn from the research.

In the future we may make the raw anonymised interview data available to the research community via an open data platform called datacite.org. Should this happen you retain the right to request its removal at any time, without giving a reason.

Right to refuse or withdraw

You do not have to take part in this research if you do not wish to do so. Choosing not to participate or to stop participating in the interview at any time will not prohibit you from attending the follow-up workshop.

I will give you an opportunity at the end of the interview/discussion to review your remarks, and you can ask to modify or remove portions of those, if you do not agree with my notes or if I did not understand you correctly.

After the interview has taken place you have the right to withdraw from the study at any point up until the publication of results from the study. Prior to this you will also be invited to attend a workshop in which the results shall be discussed within the research software community.

Who to contact

If you have any questions, you can ask them at any time before, during or after the interview. If you wish to ask questions, you may contact Sorrel Harriet by email (s.harriet(at)leedstrinity.ac.uk), or by telephone on +44 (0) 113 4673972.

This proposal has been reviewed and approved by the School of Arts and Communications Ethics Committee at Leeds Trinity University, which is a committee whose task it is to make sure that research participants are protected from harm. If you wish to find about more about this committee, contact ethics(at)leedstrinity.ac.uk.