Open Science and Research Software Engineering - Building Blocks for Quality Research

Talk given at the colloquium of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics 11.02.2025 Abstract: While we keep celebrating and promoting research excellence, we all know that research and academia are plagued by systemic problems that lead to outputs that fall short of what we would call "excellent". The reproducibility crisis in many fields as well as scientific fraud cases are just the tip of the iceberg. One aim of Open Science is to address these quality issues by promoting transparency, collaboration, and rigorous methods that foster reproducibility and accountability. In computational fields, the conversation must extend beyond the quality of papers and data to code and software. Practices such as version control, automation, testing, continuous integration, and environment stabilization not only improve code quality but also make the code easier to maintain and to collaborate among increasingly distributed teams.In this talk, I will explore the intersection of Open Science and research software engineering. I will outline practical strategies and best practices that researchers can adopt to elevate the quality of their code and, by extension, the overall quality of their research.