A comparison across SMPs

Research software is fundamental for reproducibility of science. Initiatives such as the FAIR for Research Software Principles, ADORE.software, REUSE software, and the European Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence (EVERSE) stress the importance of following good practices to maximize software reuse and sustainability. Software Management Plans (SMPs) complement the picture as they help formalize a set of structures and goals aligned to the implementation of best practices during software development, ensuring that software becomes accessible and reusable in the short-, medium- and long-term 1, 2. Despite its importance, SMPs are not yet broadly used or required by funders (as it happens with Data Management Plans –DMPs) 3. As software is used to process data, SMPs are a natural complement to DMPs. For this reason, in 2025, SMPs were integrated into the DMP4NFDI project. DMP4NFDI, one of the basic services for the National Research Data Infrastructure in Germany (NFDI), aims at providing a Research Data Management service, namely the RDM Organiser (RDMO) 4, where users can find templates (i.e., questionnaires guiding RDM-related activities and outcomes) making it easier to collect data management information along the research cycle. DMP4NFDI’s goal is to standardise those templates across NFDI by providing a template framework x. Questions pertaining to software management will be added to the framework so researchers can manage both research artifacts at once. However, an immediate question arises: which questions are relevant to an SMP template? To answer this question it is necessary to understand the existing options and their relevance to researchers, particularly in Germany. In this talk we will present a comparative analysis of five SMPs: ELIXIR SMP 5, eScience Center SMP 2, PreSOFT 6, Max Planck Digital Libraries SMP, Digital Research Alliance of Canada SMP 8, including commonalities and differences. We will finish with our own proposal for an SMP for RDMO and will gather feedback from the audience. This work is part of the deRSE26 - Conference for Research Software Engineering in Germany, see https://events.hifis.net/event/2945/contributions/21138/ This work has been partially funded by Base4NFDI, through DMP4NFDI, under the grant agreement 521474032 provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschanft (DFG).