The “ELIXIR Training Platform” is partnering with The Carpentries (Software and Data Carpentry) to train life science researchers in computing and data management skills. The “ELIXIR Software development best practices” group, which is part of the ELIXIR Tools Platform, has proposed “Four simple recommendations to encourage best practices in research software” aiming to help researchers and developers to adopt Open Source Software (OSS) practices and thus improve the quality and sustainability of research software. In order to encourage researchers and developers to adopt the four recommendations (4OSS) and build FAIR software, we developed specific training materials, taking advantage of the Carpentries approach and experience in training material development and maintenance. The goal of this tutorial is twofold: promote the adoption of the 4OSS recommendations and introduce the participants to the training materials developed to teach researchers and developers how to implement OSS practices in their research software.

Learning objectives

By the end of the tutorial participants will be familiar with:

• The Four Recommendations to adopt Open Source Software practices
• Training materials developed to teach how to adopt the Recommendations
• The Carpentries model for lesson development

Target audience

Researchers and developers who are interested in learning how to fairly and effectively collaborate on software research projects and how to make their software more FAIR by adopting simple practices such as make their source code publicly available and easily discoverable, or assign an open source licence to their software in order to make it reusable.

Tutorial speakers

Allegra Via, IBPM-CNR, Italy Mateusz Kuzak, Dutch Techcenter for Life Sciences, The Netherlands