Open Source Survey Results

Open Source Survey Results The Data Science Institute and the Open Source Program Office at UW–Madison Research Team Dr. Kyle Cranmer Allison Kittinger Bethany Philbrick Isaac Baumann Matthew Feickert Maria Oros Project Repositories: Source Code to our Myst Site Source Code to our Quarto Site Published: October 16, 2025 Table of contents 1 Home 2 2 Demographics 3 2.0.1 Role.............................................. 4 2.0.2 Affiliation........................................... 5 2.0.3 FacultyandStaff....................................... 7 2.0.4 Students............................................ 9 3 Perceptions 11 3.0.1 Value of Open Source Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 3.0.2 “OS is a valuable research output” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3.0.3 “OS translates research into innovation” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 3.0.4 Benefits of Open Source Tools in Academic Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4 Usage 17 4.0.1 Familiarity with Open Source Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 4.0.2 …software ........................................... 17 4.0.3 …hardware .......................................... 19 4.0.4 …educationalmaterials.................................... 20 4.0.5 What Open Source Tools Do Respondents Use? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 4.0.6 How Are Respondents Using University-Provided Licensed Software? . . . . . . . . . . 23 4.0.7 Usage of Open Source Tools vs. Licensed Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 5 Campus Culture 27 5.0.1 Perceptions of Open Source Culture On Campus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 5.0.2 Open Source Training On Campus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 5.0.3 Role.............................................. 31 5.0.4 Affiliation........................................... 32 6 Reproducing the Survey 34 6.1 AbouttheSurvey........................................... 34 6.1.1 Exporting Survey Data From Qualtrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 6.2 AbouttheQuartoSite........................................ 35 6.2.1 Customizing the Site Theming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 1 Chapter 1 Home Thanks to a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The University of Wisconsin–Madison Open Source Program Office (OSPO) is positioned to support and grow our vibrant open source ecosystem. The OSPO’s mission is to collaborate with key stakeholders and community members to provide open source learning opportunities, promote best practices, facilitate the use of open source software in research, and make open source–fueled connections between practitioners and adopters on campus and beyond. In Spring 2024, the OSPO distributed an open source survey to gauge the usage of open source tools among members of the university community, identify open source projects under development, and to collect feedback on improving the open source environment at UW-Madison. This site summarizes the findings of the results and allows users to explore how campus community members use open source tools at UWMadison. View the results We are open sourcing the survey itself (in Qualtrics format), an anonymized version of the responses, and this Quarto-based analysis of the survey results. Our goal is to streamline such surveys at other universities and encourage a uniform set of questions and responses that can more easily be aggregated to understand the broader open source ecosystem in academia. If you’re interested in recreating this survey and website for your institution please see the reproduction section. Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 2 Chapter 2 Demographics 323 respondents finished the survey, broken out by role and affiliation below: Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 3 4 2.0.1 Role Faculty Staff Graduate Student Other Postdoc Undergraduate Student Unaffiliated College of Letters and Sciences School of Medicine and Public Health College of Agricultural and Life Sciences College of Engineering School of Computer Data and Information Sciences School of Education School of Nursing Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Wisconsin School of Business Division of the Arts School of Veterinary Medicine College of Letters and Sciences Other College of Agricultural and Life Sciences School of Medicine and Public Health School of Computer Data and Information Sciences Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Graduate School College of Engineering School of Education Division for Teaching and Learning Division of Continuing Studies School of Nursing College of Letters and Sciences College of Agricultural and Life Sciences School of Medicine and Public Health College of Engineering Graduate School School of Computer Data and Information Sciences School of Education School of Journalism and Mass Communications Wisconsin School of Business College of Letters and Sciences College of Agricultural and Life Sciences College of Engineering Division of Extension Graduate School Other College of Letters and Sciences School of Nursing College of Agricultural and Life Sciences College of Engineering Other School of Computer Data and Information Sciences School of Medicine and Public Health College of Letters and Sciences School of Computer Data and Information Sciences College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Unaffiliated Survey Respondents Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 5 2.0.2 Affiliation College of Letters and Sciences College of Agricultural and Life Sciences School of Medicine and Public Health School of Computer Data and Information Sciences Other College of Engineering Graduate School Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research School of Education School of Nursing Wisconsin School of Business Unaffiliated Division for Teaching and Learning Division of Continuing Studies Division of Extension Division of the Arts School of Journalism and Mass Communications School of Veterinary Medicine Faculty Graduate Student Staff Other Undergraduate Student Postdoc Staff Faculty Graduate Student Other Postdoc Undergraduate Student Faculty Staff Graduate Student Postdoc Staff Faculty Undergraduate Student Graduate Student Postdoc Staff Other Postdoc Faculty Graduate Student Staff Other Postdoc Staff Graduate Student Other Staff Faculty Faculty Staff Graduate Student Faculty Postdoc Staff Faculty Graduate Student Unaffiliated Staff Staff Other Faculty Graduate Student Faculty Survey Respondents 53% of respondents said they have contributed to open source projects, either academically or personally. Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 6 No Yes 0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% Undergraduate Student Unafilliated Staff Postdoc Other Graduate Student Faculty Have contributed to open source projects? Percent Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 7 2.0.3 Faculty and Staff Of these respondents, 230 identified as faculty or staff (71% of respondents). Faculty and staff respondents were distributed in tenure (years served) at the university as below: Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 8 0 20 40 10+ years 7-10 years 4-7 years 1-3 years 0-1 years 0 20 40 Respondents Years Served Faculty Staff Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 15 3.0.4 Benefits of Open Source Tools in Academic Settings We asked survey respondents to choose among a list of potential benefits of using open-source tools in their work. Of the survey-takers who identified benefits, the percentage of respondents who identified each benefit are shown below: Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 16 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% None Scalability Customization Vendor Independence Reproducibility Community Support Flexibility Lower Costs Knowledge Sharing Percent of Respondents Agreeing with Benefits of Using Open Source Software Data Science Institute at UW–Madison Chapter 4 Usage 4.0.1 Familiarity with Open Source Tools We asked respondents how familiar they are with the concepts of open source… 4.0.2 …software Examples of open source software include Python and git Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 17 18 Extremely familiar Very familiar Moderately familiar Slightly familiar Not familiar at all 0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% 35.0% 40.0% Undergraduate Student Unafilliated Staff Postdoc Other Graduate Student Faculty Percent Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 19 4.0.3 …hardware Arduino boards are an example of open source hardware Extremely familiar Very familiar Moderately familiar Slightly familiar Not familiar at all 0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% Undergraduate Student Unafilliated Staff Postdoc Other Graduate Student Faculty Percent Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 20 4.0.4 …educational materials Khan Academy and MIT OpenCourseWare are examples of open source educational materials. Extremely familiar Very familiar Moderately familiar Slightly familiar Not familiar at all 0.0% 5.0% 10.0% 15.0% 20.0% 25.0% 30.0% Undergraduate Student Unafilliated Staff Postdoc Other Graduate Student Faculty Percent Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 21 4.0.5 What Open Source Tools Do Respondents Use? 84% of respondents identified open source tools that are key in their workflows or their fields. Tools respondents identified included: Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 22 0% 10% 20% 30% rust ruby pandas gnu scikitlearn jupyter matplotlib khan firefox imagej rstudio tensorflow git scipy qgis latex gcc htcondor github apache pytorch numpy julia linux python Responses Identifying Open Source Tool Use Note that these are respondents’ answers so not all tools may actually be open-source tools. Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 23 4.0.6 How Are Respondents Using University-Provided Licensed Software? We asked respondents which university-provided licensed software they use that are available in the university’s software library. Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 24 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% IDL - NV5 Sigma Plot Maple Origin SolidWorks JMP SmartDraw Autodesk Labview PyMOL ChemDraw TechSmith Camtasia NVivo SAS SPSS from IBM Mathematica STATA Matlab None Responses Identifying Licensed Tool Use Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 31 5.0.3 Role No Yes 0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 80.0% Undergraduate Student Unafilliated Staff Postdoc Other Graduate Student Faculty Have received open source training at UW-Madison Percent Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 32 5.0.4 Affiliation No Yes 0.0% 10.0% 20.0% 30.0% 40.0% 50.0% 60.0% 70.0% 80.0% Wisconsin School of Business Unafilliated School of Veterinary Medicine School of Nursing School of Medicine and Public Health School of Journalism and Mass Communications School of Education School of Computer Data and Information Sciences Other Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Graduate School Division of the Arts Division of Extension Division of Continuing Studies Division for Teaching and Learning College of Letters and Sciences College of Engineering College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Have received open source training at UW-Madison Percent 87% of respondents said that they “would like to see more training, education, or support for learning how Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 33 to contribute to open source project” and 73% of respondents expressed interest in potential open source training sessions and workshops organized by the Open Source Program Office. Data Science Institute at UW–Madison Chapter 6 Reproducing the Survey Both the 2024 UW-Madison open source survey and this Quarto analysis are open source. Instructions for customizing and reproducing this analysis are included here for ease of use. This project was inspired by a needs assessment survey conducted by the NYU Data Science and Software Services (DS3), an open source survey which was reproduced at the University of Washington. 6.1 About the Survey The 2024 open source survey at UW-Madison was administered with Qualtrics. Both the .qsf file for the survey and an example CSV of anonymized survey response data are available in this project’s GitHub repo. 6.1.1 Exporting Survey Data From Qualtrics Once your survey period is over, you can easily export your survey data. Within the Qualtrics project site for your survey, navigate to “Data and Analysis” →“Export & Import” →“Export Data…” and use the default settings in the options menu (“Download all fields” and “Use choice text”) to export the survey response data as a CSV file. Data Science Institute at UW–Madison 34 35 (a) Select “Export data…” (a) Use the default options in the pop-up download options menu 6.2 About the Quarto Site This Quarto site uses the UW-Madison Quarto Template to conform to UW-Madison brand guidelines. The template is easily customizable to incorporate the color schemes, logos, and typefaces of other institutions. Analysis of survey results is performed within R code chunks within the Quarto files for the appropriate pages. Please note that the the analysis code written for this template is specific to the format of the 2024 UW-Madison open source survey. If you change the format of your survey you will likely need to customize the code to adapt to your survey’s response data. 6.2.1 Customizing the Site Theming Most universities have a brand guidelines webpage that provides the color hex codes and typefaces that conform with the university’s brand identity. custom.scss contains the SASS that styles all elements of the site that are not plots generated by R. You can customize the theme of the Quarto site here using your institutional brand’s colors and typefaces. Custom fonts can be imported directly from Google Fonts in custom.scss or downloaded and installed locally. setup.R is an R script that loads necessary packages and handles theming of R code output, like plots. Customize the sections of this script that define variables for your institution’s name and color palette. The .qmd files that make up this Quarto site each source this file, so color variables, names, and plot themes customized in setup.R will apply to R output throughout the site. Some R chunks in the site qmd files, such as in usage.qmd, also contain vectors that you can edit to remove unwanted words or characters from free response field analyses or to highlight certain elements of plots. Data Science Institute at UW–Madison