AN INTERNATIONAL CENSUS OF RESEARCH SOFTWARE IN INSTITUTIONAL ACADEMIC REPOSITORIES. This work expands on previous research, which examined 182 academic IRs from 157 universities in the UK¹. Few records of research software were found in IRs and the majority of IRs could not contain software as independent records of research output due to the underlying Research Information System (RIS) platform. Expanding on this work, similar analyses were performed on international IRs in what we believe is the first such census of its kind. 4,970 repositories from 125 countries were examined for the presence of software, along with repository-based metadata for potentially correlating factors. This will add evidence to the movement to recognise software as distinct and recordable research output in its own right. KEY RESULTS INTRODUCTION References [1] Carlin D, Rainer A, Wilson D. 2023. Where is all the research software? An analysis of software in UK academic repositories. PeerJ Comput. Sci. 9:e1546 http://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.1546 [in press] [2] OpenDOAR. Online: https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/opendoar/ CONCLUSIONS Dr. Domhnall Carlin | Centre for Secure Information Technologies, Queen’s University Belfast, N. Ireland. | d.carlin@qub.ac.uk No software search 50% Does not contain software 22.5% Error 19.9% Contains software 7.6% Analysis of repositories METHODOLOGY Source data were compiled from OpenDOAR², the directory of global Open Access Repositories. A list of institutional academic repositories was derived, providing URLs, country code and RIS platform. Each URL from 4,970 repositories across 125 countries was visited manually to search for research software. Each repository was categorised as one of: Contains software: software is a searchable item and the repository contains such records Does not contain software: software is a searchable item but the repository contains no such records No software search: software is not recognised as a specific item of output Europe 1856 America 1439 Asia 1364 Africa 214 Repositories per continent 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 dspace eprints weko digital commons Unknown islandora opus contentdm hal pure Top 10 RIS platforms Only 7.6% of IRs sampled globally contained software Around 30% could contain software Half did not recognise software as a discrete type of output Dspace accounts for nearly 40% of repositories Default config includes software as a type¹ However, 64.4% had no search item for software Defaults may have been removed A single word in a config file can allow software types (e.g. EPrints) Many IRs adopt Dublin Core Metadata format, but do not use defined vocab for types 1. Software is scarcely indexed in IRs 2. RIS platforms appear to have defaults altered 3. This may often be a policy issue, not a technical one FUTURE WORK Create a dedicated dashboard to monitor the change over time of software in IRs Automate the detection of software artefacts through lightweight and ethical harvesting Increase the coverage of the source data, particularly in underrepresented regions and countries Systematically clean the data using source code from repositories to provide metadata Use this evidence to inform policy lobbying initiatives Acknowledgements This work was supported as part of Dr Carlin’s UKRI EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellowship (EP/V052284/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.