Funding sources for RSE work

The Turing Way project illustration by Scriberia. Used under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. DOI: The Turing Way Community & Scriberia (2024).

Funding is an important aspect of the RSE role as it enables RSEs to dedicate time and resources to their work. In this section, we analyse the funding sources for RSE work over the years.

Data source and methodology

• The data for this analysis are collected from the option fund2 for the years 2017, 2018, and 2022.
• The period from 2019 to 2021 is not reported as the data for these years are not available.
• This code contains the responses to the survey question: Which of the following sources are used to pay for your effort as an RSE?.
• Using the R package ggplot2, the data are visualised in the form of a stacked bar chart.
• Since there are multiple responses for this question, the categories reported include Grants”, “Institutional support”, “Industry support”, “Consulting & services”, “I volunteer my time”, and every other source is classified as “Other”.
• The script for this analysis is available in the file fund.R of the repository.

Funding sources

Key findings

Over the years, there has been a reduction in the time spent on volunteer basis by RSEs and an improvement in the institutional support for their work.