How to make your research software ready for publishing?

Do you need to publish your research software and want to ensure it follows the latest best practices to make it FAIR? Or do you need help guiding researchers through this process? Join us for a hands-on tutorial session to learn how the open-source Code Auditor tool can help you to identify potential issues and offer guidance on how to resolve them. In this session, you'll learn the principles of research software conformity checking and how to use Code Auditor to assess research software projects against best practices, identify potential issues, and receive actionable recommendations for improvement. The session is aimed at researchers and RSEs who develop research software, as well as data and software stewards who support FAIR practices in research software development. With Code Auditor, you can quickly analyze an existing software project, such as a local code base or GitHub repository, and receive a detailed report on various aspects, including code layout, version control, license, citation, user documentation, code documentation, packaging, unit testing, and publishing. The report will highlight issues like missing citation files, inconsistent packaging information, incomplete code documentation, and more, while providing actionable suggestions for improvement. Additionally, the tool can automatically fix many of the identified issues with a single command. Adhering to best practices in research software development is essential for creating modern and sustainable research software. However, keeping up with the rapidly evolving best practices can be challenging. Code Auditor is designed to assess adherence to these practices and aims to support the development of research code by promoting consistency, quality, and reproducibility across projects. Code Auditor was developed as part of the Thematic Digital Competence Centre (TDCC) for the Natural & Engineering Sciences (NES) Bottleneck project, "Best Practices for Sustainable Software" (https://tdcc.nl/projects/project-initiatives-nes/tdcc-nes-bottleneck-projects/best-practices-for-sustainable-software/). Our goal is to support researchers, RSEs, data stewards, and software stewards by providing a cutting-edge tool to audit research software, identify issues that impede FAIR practices, and offer guidance on how to quickly and easily resolve them. During the session, we will introduce the tool and conduct a hands-on tutorial on how to use it. Participant feedback will be very valuable in helping us improve the tool and enhance its user-friendliness for the community.