Last time, we gave you a short overview of what we plan to do in CrOSSD. This month, we’ll introduce ourselves so you have a better idea of where we’re coming from. 

Sebastian Neumaier is CrOSSD’s PI. He is a researcher at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences and holds a PhD degree in Computer Science from TU Wien. His research focuses on different aspects of knowledge graphs, data management and data quality, and he has previously published e. g. on quality assessment of open data (“Automated Quality Assessment of Metadata across Open Data Portals”, https://doi.org/10.1145/2964909), Knowledge Graphs (https://doi.org/10.1145/3447772) and ODArchive (“ODArchive – Creating an Archive for Structured Data from Open Data Portals”, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62466-8_20). His particular strengths in understanding, managing and researching structured data make him the ideal project lead. 

I (Lukas Daniel Klausner) am Co-PI of the project. My background as a mathematician gives me extensive knowledge of combinatorics, algorithms and logic as well as experience with abstraction and modelling to the project. I have carried out similar abstracting activities in research projects I led (on accountability for algorithm-assisted decision-making in organisations, https://research.fhstp.ac.at/en/projects/algorithms-law-and-society-decision-makers-between-algorithmic-guidance-and-personal-responsibility) or was the main researcher on (e. g. on risk prediction in supply chain management, https://research.fhstp.ac.at/en/projects/algorithmic-prediction-and-participation-a-study-on-the-relationship-between-predictive-risk-intelligence-and-workers-organisations). My current research focuses mostly on science and technology studies, which will be particularly helpful for the “health” criteria that are less clear-cut, easily automatisable and self-evident. 

Finally, Tobias Dam holds a Master's degree in Information Security from St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences. He is developer of the MiningHunter framework (https://doi.org/10.1145/3230833.3230869) and has experience in web scraping and information analysis, which is essential for the extraction of data on OSS projects and for the subsequent evaluation. He will be the main programmer and implementer on the project, while Sebastian and I will focus on the theoretical and organisational aspects. 

Additionally, we have a strong focus on integration of research and teaching here at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences. Just one month into the project, we already have a student working with us on a specific subproject of CrOSSD for their master’s thesis: Jacqueline Schmatz is conducting a systematic literature review of existing research on quantitative metrics for OSS project “health”. 

Our team thus brings together a great mix of more theoretical-minded researchers and hands-on developers, which makes us confident we’ll be able to achieve our goal as planned. :) 

We are currently hard at work setting up the technical side of things and writing up an overview of the current state of the art regarding quantitative metrics.