Identifying if particular models are better at particular stages

[npch]

A major feature enhancement of this guide would be identifying where particular models are better suited to particular stages / or types of work.

[npch]

For example:

• Volunteers: useful for doing initial versions of new features, or maintaining specific non-critical components
• Grants: useful for initial stages of development, but harder to use for long-term sustainability at significant effort levels because of increased competition

[danielskatz]

I completely agree - that would be great!

Do you think a structural change/addition now could help encourage people to contribute to this, in this way? If so, would you be willing to make a PR to do it?

Or do you have another suggestion as to how to do this?

[apawlik]

I wonder how much in case of research projects the choice of infrastructure/tools/methods may affect sustainability. Considering that research software involves (typically) two aspects: advanced domain knowledge and software development skills, the community of contributors varies. That is, ideally you want all of them to be research software engineers but you may increase sustainability by lowering the technical/software engineering barriers to include contributors who have deep domain knowledge and so can contribute a lot to, for example, the specifics of the algorithm but if they can only do that via a PR (and rebase beforehand! :-) ), they may just give up because they don't know how to do that.