Resources

UT-OSPO Participation Pathway

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Level 1: Using

Researchers use appropriate open source software tools.

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Level 2: Contributing

Research teams have a deeper understanding of an external software community, participate in identifying bugs, and asking for new features.

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Level 3: Sharing

Software from a team is made available using an open source license and on an open platform facilitating collaboration (e.g., GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, etc).

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Level 4: Accepting

An open source project receives contributions from outside the founding researchers.

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Level 5: Advancing Ecosystems (upstream/downstream)

  • An open source project is part of a larger ecosystem of related projects with up and downstream dependencies.
  • Project members contribute and mentor in upstream and downstream projects.
Open Source Participation Pathway

Participation Pathway Poster

Download a visual representation of the pathway levels.

UT resources

Discovery to Impact

Are you a UT researcher, staff member, or student with an idea or technology you think has potential? You’ve come to the right place. Discovery to Impact can help.

Discovery to Impact is the connection between campus innovators and industry. We cultivate ideas, uncover pathways to market, and foster commercial collaborations that translate academic research into services, treatments, and products that benefit society.

Grant facilities language for UT-OSPO

The University of Texas Open Source Program Office (UT-OSPO) is a center for open source activity, connection, and training across the University of Texas at Austin. The UT-OSPO helps grow the UT open source communities and provide long-term open source software connections for researchers through a diverse program of training, high-level consultations, and best practice documentation. The UT-OSPO is jointly coordinated by UT Austin’s central IT services, the UT Libraries, the iSchool, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC).

More specifically, this University-wide support institute offers a variety of training courses open to students, faculty, and researchers from introductory material on the why’s and how’s behind open source to more advanced courses on using containerization to each distributed, open source software development. We offer support through the existing help desks at the UT Libraries, UT Central IT, and TACC, in addition to Best Practice Documents on our website, https://opensource.utexas.edu/. In addition, we can work directly with departments and development teams to help guide you to resources or support in-house activities, such as hackathons. For more information, please visit the website.

Open Source community websites

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US Research Software Sustainability Institute (URSSI)

URSSI's mission is to improve the recognition , development, and use , of software for a more sustainable research enterprise.

FOSS Foundation Directory

Free and open-source software (FOSS)
Welcome to the FOSS Foundations Metadata directory! We are eager to collaborate with academic researchers and open source practitioners alike on curating rich metadata about the many excellent non-profit Foundations that either host or help open source projects succeed.

UT-OSPO News

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A pathway for participation in research open source

Feb. 20, 2024
UT-OSPO core team members James Howison and Jennifer Schopf discuss maturity models and present the UT OSPO Participation Pathway illustrated with case study examples from the NetSage open source project.

UT establishes new hub for open source software collaboration, support

Nov. 7, 2023
With financial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, experts from the Texas Advanced Computing Center, central IT services, University of Texas Libraries and the School of Information are collaborating to run this project.

UT Launches Open Source Software Office To Support Researchers

Oct. 25, 2023
To maximize the social and economic impact of open source software in research and education, The University of Texas at Austin has launched the Open Source Program Office, a central hub for open source activity, connection, training and support to enable open source practices as a key part of the University.
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UT-OSPO Training Events

Event Status
Scheduled
Tuesday May 13, 2025, 10:00 am - 2:00 pm
Perry-Castaneda Library (PCL) Scholars Lab
Join the UT Libraries and UT Open Source Program Office on Tuesday, May 13th for an in-depth discussion of open scholarship. We will be covering all of the major facets of open scholarship from open data and open source software to open access publishing. Join us in the PCL Scholars Lab from 10:00am to 2:00pm to learn about open scholarship resources, relevant services available to UT researchers, and best practices. Lunch will be provided.
Event Status
Scheduled
Thursday May 15, 2025, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Virtual Training
Join us for a virtual informational session about federal funding agency policy changes going into effect in 2025 that may impact your research. We will cover the expanded sharing requirements for outputs of federally funded research, describe where researchers can find more information, and highlight the resources that are available at UT Austin to assist with compliance. We will discuss the commonalities and differences among individual research funding agency plans, and we’ll be able to answer questions you have about specific funders.
Event Status
Scheduled
Monday June 16, 2025, 8:00 am - Friday June 20, 2025, 5:00 pm
New York City, NY
UN Open Source Week 2025 facilitates global dialogue and collaboration on open source, digital public infrastructure (DPI), and the development of innovative solutions to global challenges. Since its inception in 2023, the event has captured significant international attention, reflecting strong demand for a UN-led forum on open source and digital cooperation.
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