# Episode 267: Michelle Barker on the Research Software Alliance (ReSA)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/sustain-796832/episode-267-michelle-barker-on-the-research-software-alliance-resa
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/sustain-796832/episode-267-michelle-barker-on-the-research-software-alliance-resa.md
Podcast: [Sustain](https://stenobird.com/podcast/sustain-796832)
Published: 2025-05-02T14:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://podcast.sustainoss.org/267
Audio file: https://aphid.fireside.fm/d/1437767933/27729c65-f4a6-4496-8c86-820e7f13b285/18788ae9-a638-4d9f-bce3-448aed93d964.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/sustain-796832/episodes/episode-267-michelle-barker-on-the-research-software-alliance-resa
Duration seconds: 2087

## Resource

Guest Michelle Barker Panelist Richard Littauer Show Notes In this episode of Sustain, host Richard Littauer welcomes Michelle Barker, Director of the Research Software Alliance (ReSA), for an in-depth conversation about the critical yet often overlooked role of research software in open science. Michelle shares her journey from sociologist to open science advocate, unpacking how ReSA fosters global collaboration to support software developed for research. Together, they explore what it means to build “social infrastructure” in the open source ecosystem, the challenges of aligning international stakeholders, and how ReSA is shaping the future of research through strategy, connection, and community-driven solutions. Press the download button now to hear more! [00:01:58] Michelle explains how she got involved in open science and open source software. [00:04:35] Why Research Software? Michelle shares that ReSA was founded to coordinate globally on research software, which lacked unified international representation unlike open data. [00:07:21] We hear about ReSA’s engagement strategy and the three main strategies: knowledge sharing, stakeholder collaboration, and governance evolution. [00:09:37] ReSA includes RSEs as one of many stakeholders and works broadly across funders, policymakers, infrastructure providers, and more. [00:10:26] Research software is defined as software developed within a research context to solve a research problem and most is open source but not all. [00:13:12] Richard asks about tracking engagement, and Michelle shares it’s hard to quantify outcomes, but standard metrics include newsletter subs, citations, and forum attendance. [00:15:08] Michelle explains the role of social infrastructure. [00:17:37] What’s hard about being a social infrastructur…

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## Transcript

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