An exciting new funding stream to support scientific software has just been announced! The Open Source for Science Fund (OS4Science) is a new multi-funder initiative to support and evolve the open source software stack that underpins scientific research. See the launch announcement.

Their inaugural funding call focuses on life sciences and targets mature open-source projects in two tiers

  • Domain-specific tools — up to $250K over 2 years;
  • Foundational libraries and ecosystems — up to $1M over 2 years.

Notably, the fund is open to organisations worldwide, not only US-based ones. Quote from the call: “Applications may be submitted by domestic and foreign nonprofit and for-profit organizations, public and private institutions, including colleges, universities, hospitals, laboratories, units of state and local government, companies, and eligible agencies of the federal government. Grants are not made to individuals, only to organizations.”

This looks like a great opportunity for maintainers of research software in the life sciences and I hope there will be many calls to come across different disciplines (I’ll be keeping an eye out for earth sciences and climate science!).