Susereum: Towards a Reward Structure for Sustainable Scientific Research Software

Research software has opened up new pathways of discovery in many and diverse disciplines. This research software is developed under unique budgetary and schedule constraints. Its development is driven by knowledge discovery goals often without documented requirements. As a result, the software code quality is impacted which often hinders its sustainability beyond the immediate research goals. More importantly, the prevalent reward structures favor contributions in terms of research articles and systematically undervalues research codes contributions. As a result, researchers and funding agencies do not allocate appropriate efforts or resources to the development, sustenance, and dissemination of research codebases. This paper presents Susereum, a Blockchain based platform that aims at achieving two goals. First, restructuring prevalent incentives by awarding permanent immutable credit to research code authors similar to the credit awarded to the authors of scientific articles. Second, distributing sovereignty by empowering peers through a consensus process to define code sustainability and impact metrics.