The beta version of the catalogue of free software for academic research has been launched

The Committee for Open Science and its Software and Source Codes College are pleased to announce the opening of the “catalogue of academic research free software”. This catalogue was one of the ambitions set out in the National Plan for Open Science and follows on from the January 2025 report on the subject of software referencing  which helped define the architectural choices made for the development of the catalogue.

The choices made were that:

• HAL is the current main database for the catalogue. The catalogue harvests all the software records present in HAL following the consolidation of their moderation in 2020 (resulting from the collaboration between HAL and Software Heritage). All contributors can enrich the catalogue by using HAL software records.
• The catalogue is based on the tool developed by DINUM (Interministerial Digital Directorate) for the SILL (Interministerial Free Software Base):
• The entries are enriched by data that are directly retrieved from certain repositories (github, and those based on gitlab).

The catalogue is currently in its beta version and a survey is being carried out to consolidate and develop it. This survey will enable us to fully understand the scientific community’s requirements and expectations.

To find out more, you can:

• Read the report ‘Vers un catalogue des logiciels issus de la recherche‘ (Towards a catalogue of software derived from research, in French).
• Explore the catalogue of free software for academic research.