Preservation and sustainability of software are vital areas of development in the EOSC ecosystem and best practices from various communities need to be aligned to maximise software reuse. Proposals should cover the following activities:

• Foster alignment of existing initiatives by promoting coherence and developing community guidelines.
• Promote the use of already existing common technical specifications, standards or infrastructure, endorsed by the various scientific communities.
• Define software delivering and packing best practices towards software reusability, including deployment descriptions, packaging methodologies, integration on problem solving collaborative environments such as notebooks.
• Ensure integration of infrastructure, tools and services not just for software but also for computational models, workflows and anything that is code-based. This should include a Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) setup for codes and live testing on relevant data.
• The systems and services developed within the scope of the topic should be flexible and scalable in their deployment by making use of cloud technologies, such as containers, to allow an easy integration with the future EOSC Core infrastructure.
• Define a baseline of Source Code quality based on coding principles and coding best practices, including API and documentation. Provide tools for the automatic testing of conformance.
• Develop minimum quality certification frameworks through automated checks, pipelines and digital badges. Provide indication of code maturity within the software life cycle.
• Allow for the integration of automatic testing for security vulnerability and license infringements.
• Ensure optimal and sustainable software archival practices and mainstream software citation and correct attribution for inclusion in novel research assessment frameworks.
• Incentivise open, community-driven and sustainable software development, involving labs as well as individuals (long-tail of science). Establish software green houses which nurture and support new codes and integrate with software quality tools.
• Develop FAIR metrics frameworks for digital objects such as software, code, computational models, workflows, etc.
• Develop or align pre-existing training materials for software development skills, digital badges, etc.

The granting authority can fund a maximum of one project.