Equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging (EDIB) matter in research software because they affect who can take part, whose perspectives inform tools and practices, and how communities sustain themselves over time. This guide explains what each principle means in this context and how it can be applied through Institute activities, community initiatives, and everyday individual action.
Equity (Who can realistically participate?)
Unlike equality, which treats everyone the same, equity recognises structural barriers and the need for different kinds of support to achieve comparable outcomes. It asks who can realistically access an opportunity, and how activities can support participation across different locations, institutions, employment arrangements, and personal responsibilities. When barriers remain, communities risk losing expertise and narrowing the perspectives that sustain shared practice.
Research within the research software community shows underrepresentation by gender and ethnicity compared with the wider research workforce, reflecting broader inequalities in software development (Cohen et al., 2021). Research on open source participation also identifies a lack of resources and unfavourable environments as common barriers (Prana et al., 2020).
Equity works best when it changes the conditions of participation. Outreachy does this through paid, remote internships with mentoring. Linux Foundation events provide travel funding and scholarships. The Society of Research Software Engineering’s RSECon25 Participation and Inclusion Fund similarly supports online access and bursaries for costs including travel, accommodation, and childcare. Material support like this is often necessary to overcome structural barriers (Santos and Gama, 2024).
Diversity (Who is present?)
Diversity means difference within a community, including lived experience, discipline, career stage, geography, identity, and ways of thinking. This can include contributors from different domains and institutions, representation across genders and ethnicities, disabled and neurodivergent people, and people in different professional roles. Broader participation helps communities spot gaps in assumptions and build more resilient research software practices.
Supporting diversity means widening pathways into participation and leadership at institutional, community, and individual levels. R-Ladies Global does this through distributed local chapters and organiser mentoring. Black in AI creates affinity spaces that increase representation in technical conversations around issues such as bias in AI, while adapting participation formats when barriers arise. These kinds of structured community networks are associated with sustained diversity over time (Serebrenik et al., 2020).
Expanding who is present is only a first step, though - people also need to be able to participate meaningfully once they arrive.
Inclusion (How does participation happen?)
Inclusion is about whether people can participate fully once they are there. Diversity alone does not guarantee positive experiences. Inclusion asks whether people feel respected, heard, and able to contribute.
In research software and data contexts, this may mean events that are accessible in practice through clear participation guidance, hybrid or asynchronous options, and attention to the needs of, for example, disabled and neurodivergent people and people with caring responsibilities. It also includes facilitation that supports participation across different levels of confidence and experience, recognition of contributions beyond code, and communication that avoids unnecessary assumptions about prior knowledge.
Inclusion is most effective when people build it in formally rather than leaving it to unspoken expectations or goodwill. Making norms and expectations explicit improves inclusion and retention within technical teams (Kohl and Prikladnicki, 2024), and many communities now treat codes of conduct as an important part of safe and respectful participation environments (Cohen et al., 2021).
The Carpentries embeds inclusive participation in teaching guidance, accessibility support, and transparent incident-response processes. The Turing Way does it via clear community guidelines and structured onboarding for newcomers. In both cases, inclusion becomes real through clear structures, explicit norms, and practical processes rather than being left implicit.
Belonging (How is participation experienced over time?)
Belonging is what comes from sustained equitable, diverse, and inclusive practice - the feeling of being accepted, valued, and able to contribute meaningfully within a community. While equity, diversity, and inclusion focus on structures and behaviours, belonging is about the experience and helps people stay engaged.
Belonging often grows through repeated opportunities for connection rather than one-off participation. Django Girls does this through local, beginner-friendly workshops that combine learning with peer support and help participants build confidence and community ties. PyData uses mentoring, small group discussion, and collaborative activities to help people move from attending events to feeling part of a shared community.
Everyday interactions can also create belonging. Welcoming newcomers, recognising contributions, sharing knowledge, and making space for others to participate all count. Studies of software engineering teams find that inclusive interpersonal practices create positive feedback loops that sustain diverse participation (Dagan et al., 2023).
By combining intentional design with supportive interpersonal and community practices, we can help ensure people do not simply pass through shared spaces, but come to feel part of them.
Applying EDIB in practice
Embedding equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging means making intentional choices about resources, participation, support, and how people are welcomed and recognised in the community. Across SSI activities, community initiatives, and everyday interactions, these principles help build a research software community that is not only larger, but also fairer, stronger, and better able to sustain excellent research over time.
References
Cohen, J. et al. (2021) Understanding equity, diversity and inclusion challenges within the research software community. SE4Science Workshop. https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.01712
Dagan, E. et al. (2023) Building and sustaining ethnically, racially, and gender diverse software engineering teams. Proceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, pp. 1-8. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3611643.3616273
Kohl, K. and Prikladnicki, R. (2024) Gender diversity on software development teams. In: Mendez, D. and Lenberg, P. (eds.) Equity, diversity, and inclusion in software engineering. Berkeley: Apress, pp. 169-184. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4842-9651-6_11
Nagappan, M., Zimmermann, T. and Bird, C. (2013) Diversity in software engineering research. Proceedings of the 2013 9th Joint Meeting on Foundations of Software Engineering, pp. 1-10. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/2491411.2491415
Prana, G.A.A. et al. (2020) Including everyone, everywhere. https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.00822
Santos, R. and Gama, K. (2024) Hidden populations in software engineering. https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.09608
Serebrenik, A. et al. (2020) Diversity and inclusion in the software engineering research community. IEEE Software, 37(5), pp. 1-4. https://aserebre.win.tue.nl/SEN2020Diversity.pdf
Acknowledgements
This guide was written by PJ Annand, Senior Research Fellow (Associate Professor) in Digital Care at the University of Sheffield, and reviewed by Mike Simpson.