The S³ School is a one-week training program designed to teach good and modern coding practices tailored for scientific software development.
Our goal is to empower researchers, scientists, and Research Software Engineers (RSEs) with the skills to build sustainable, open, and reproducible research software following recognized best practices.
Context: Building Sustainable Research Software in the European Open Science Landscape
The S³ School is part of a broader European initiative to promote sustainable, high-quality research software within the framework of Open Science. This effort is supported by two key Horizon Europe projects: OSCARS and EVERSE.
OSCARS (Open Science Clusters' Action for Research and Society)
OSCARS brings together five Science Clusters — covering environmental sciences, life sciences, social sciences and humanities, photon and neutron science, and astronomy and particle physics — to strengthen their role in the European Research Area by consolidating their past achievements into lasting interdisciplinary FAIR data services and working practices across scientific disciplines and communities, and by fostering the implementation of Open Science projects and services.
EVERSE (European Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence) focuses on creating a framework for research software and code excellence. Collaboratively designed by research communities across the five EOSC Science Clusters and national Research Software Expertise Centres, EVERSE aims to build a European network dedicated to Research Software Quality. The project emphasizes community curation, quality assessment, and best practices, contributing to high-quality, sustainable, and reusable research software.
Target Audience
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Postgraduate students, early-career researchers, and junior RSEs at the start of their research or software development projects.
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Researchers and scientists who regularly code, particularly those working in collaborative environments, and who want to improve their software development skills for open science and reproducible research.
Prerequisites:
Participants should:
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Have basic knowledge of Python and shell command-line usage.
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Bring a personal laptop with:
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A Unix terminal,
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Git installed,
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An active GitHub account.
Key Information
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Dates: 21–28 January 2026 (Wednesday to Wednesday)
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Duration: 1 week
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Location: LAPP, Annecy, France
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Participants: ~60 attendees + ~10 instructors
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Format:
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In-person lectures, workshops, and hands-on sessions
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Recorded sessions and open educational resources will be made available online after the event.
Teaching Resources
We build on a rich set of existing teaching materials, including:
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Previous summer schools’ resources,
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Software Carpentries modules,
Content from the EVERSE project and related initiatives.
