The Hub aims to balance creative freedom with intellectual and technical rigour, attaining standards that reflect the long traditions of scholarship we have inherited as a research community. This is especially important in HASS because of the wide range of potential methods.
As with any research collaboration, the first step is getting to know each other. The process starts with discussing possibilities and understanding deadlines and constraints. No idea is too big or small!
We welcome enquiries from colleagues at any stage of their project, from early concept development to legacy maintenance or archiving. We will discuss your request as a team and work out how to best support you. Sometimes that will result in further meetings, and sometimes we will point you towards other colleagues (including external vendors) who might be able to provide better support. In some cases, we will be able to provide you with the infrastructure and tools to get started yourself right away.
The Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) diagram above indicates our work pattern. You are welcome to contact us at any stage of your research, but we recommend 3 months’ notice of a grant bid so that we can be involved in preliminary discussions and ensure we have enough capacity. If a mutual decision is made to move forward, we will work with you to produce a Research Software Engineering (RSE) Definition document which will outline what we will deliver and provide costs for initial development and any subsequent hosting and maintenance. This can be used as intellectual and technical input to your grant bid, as well as a formal quote to help with the budgeting process. If your research output needs to be hosted online, we will produce a Service Level Agreement (SLA) before go-live detailing the nature and extent of the hosting, along with options to manage long-term sustainability.
The first step is simply to contact us with basic details about your research and goals.