Adopting Software Engineering Concepts in Scientific Research: Insights from Physicists and Mathematicians Turned Consultants

Physicists and mathematicians spend a fair amount of their research time developing software, as most modern calculations cannot be solved analytically and require numerical solutions. Despite this situation, researchers in these areas tend to place little importance on integrating formal software engineering concepts (SECs) into their projects. To investigate the potential benefits of SECs in scientific projects, a survey among 93 former physics and mathematics researchers who today work as consultants in the software engineering domain was conducted. In the survey, the participants reflected on the usefulness of various SECs for improving repeatability, reproducibility, and correctness of research results. The responses suggest that research in these fields could benefit from an increased usage of SECs, particularly agile development, continuous integration, and containerization. The study presents a novelty in this field, as previous work has focused on surveying active researchers who typically lack experience in professional software engineering.
Source: Computing in Science and Engineering - Category: Information Technology Source Type: research