Resolution No.1 (2009): Software

IAGA, noting that

• the Association has played a prominent role in data management through its leadership of the Electronic Geophysical Year, and that IUGG has formed a new organization to support data management,
• nevertheless some other aspects of scientific research in the IAGA disciplines are still hindered by the scarcity of software in the public domain,

recognizing that

• despite increasing pressures on scientific budgets, there is a need to provide support for research in developing countries and encourage new collaborations,
• it is central to IAGA's charter to promote international science by encouraging world-wide open access to the means for pursuing research,
• the necessary means include scientific software, in particular for modelling and for simulating physical processes (where excellent examples exist already in some areas of IAGA science), and for theoretical research,

resolves to

• through the URSI/IAGA Joint Working Group on VLF/ELF Remote Sensing of the Ionosphere and Magnetosphere (VERSIM), take an initiative similar to those already taken in data management, aimed at making software for data analysis, modeling, simulation and theoretical research more freely available to the scientific community,
• investigate
• the need for large-scale open-access software,
• how its development could be funded,
• for smaller items of software, create a public space on the IAGA website, where researchers can freely upload their code and download the code of their colleagues, and that this section of the website be also used as a portal by which larger items of software can be listed and described, and links to them provided.