Debian Conference 2025, Brest, Jul 14th - 19th
Debian in the Research Software Ecosystem:
An Exploratory Bibliometric Analysis
Joenio M. Costa and Christina von Flach
Institute of Computing, Federal University of Bahia
Joenio Marques da Costa
Institute of Computing, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA)
- PhD candidate in Software Engineering
- Work at Cortext Platform (www.cortext.net)
- Debian Developer
- Member of the SEED.br research group
Christina von Flach
https://christinaflach.github.io
Institute of Computing, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA)
- Ph.D. in Computer Science (2004)
- Professor at the UFBA Institute of Computing (1990-today)
- Head of the SEED.br research group
Research Software is software that is designed and developed to support research activities.
Source: Morane Gruenpeter et al. 2021.
Defining Research Software: A controversial discussion.
Research Software Ecosystem
Source: James Howison and James D. Herbsleb. 2011.
Scientific software production: incentives and collaboration.
Bibliometric Analysis is a method for exploring and analyzing large volumes of scientific data.
Source: Naveen Donthu et al. 2021.
How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: An overview and guidelines.
Bibliometric Analysis data
Research Strategy
- Search and collect data from Scopus
- Filter data by inclusion and exclusion criterias
- Explore the data with a bibliometric analysis
Data search and collection
Due to the exploratory nature of our work, we only collected data from one bibliographic research database, Scopus.
- Results: 473 documents
Data filter and screening
| Name | Inclusion criteria | Exclusion criteria |
|---|---|---|
| Language | Is English | Isn’t English |
| Year | Beetween 1993-2024 | Isn’t beetween 1993-2024 |
| Author | Isn’t empty | Is empty |
| Title | Match “debian” | Doesn’t match “debian” |
| Abstract | Match “debian” | Doesn’t match “debian” |
In this step 53 documents were removed in a semi-automated procedure.
- Results: 420 documents
Paper excluded from our dataset:
Rodríguez R. et al. 1995.
La perspectiva profesional en la reforma de la atención primaria de salud: una aproximación cualitativa.
Abstract: “La mayor parte de los profesionales opinaban que los programas de enfermedades prevalentes debían venir elaborados de forma vertical…“
Paper metadata:
Type = Article, Language = English
Source = Gaceta Sanitaria
Paper included in our dataset:
Ahsan Ullah et al. 2024.
A Comparative Study on Vulnerabilities, Challenges, and Security Measures in
Wireless Network Security.
Abstract: “Dataset, generated using Tpot within Debian operating system, serves as the cornerstone of this research, with…“
Paper metadata:
Type = Article, Language = English,
Source = Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems
Publication count per year
What is the annual number of publications?
What is oldest publication found?
Tommi Syrjänen. 2000.
Including Diagnostic Information in Configuration Models.
Abstract: “As an example, a subset of the configuration problem for the Debian GNU/Linux system is formalized using the new rule-based language.”
The first paper indexed by Scopus mentioning Debian was published only 7 years after the Debian release in 1993.
Paper metadata:
Type = Conference paper, Language = English,
Source = Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence
Which papers have been cited the most by other papers?
The top-cited papers are Research Software
Ardavan F. Oskooi. 2010.
Meep: A flexible free-software package for electromagnetic simulations by the FDTD method.
(cited 2,437 times)
Abstract: “Operating system: Any Unix-like system; developed under Debian GNU/Linux 5.0.2.”
Scopus metadata:
Type = Article, Language = English,
Source = Computer Physics Communications
The 1st top-cited paper is a Research Software
Role-based category: Modeling, Simulation, and Data Analytics
Ardavan F. Oskooi. 2010.
Meep: A flexible free-software package for electromagnetic simulations by the FDTD method.
Abstract:
“This paper describes Meep, a popular free implementation of the
finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method for simulating electromagnetism. In
particular, we focus on aspects of implementing a full-featured FDTD package
that go beyond standard textbook descriptions of the algorithm, or ways in
which Meep differs from typical FDTD implementations…
Operating system: Any Unix-like system; developed under Debian GNU/Linux
5.0.2…“
The top 10 most cited papers are about algorithm implementation and research software (tools).
| # | Title | Year | Cited by | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Meep: A flexible free-software package for electromagnetic simulations by the FDTD method | 2010 | 2437 | Article |
| 02 | SNP-sites: rapid efficient extraction of SNPs from multi-FASTA alignments | 2016 | 893 | Article |
| 03 | Seamless R and C++ integration with Rcpp | 2013 | 281 | Book |
| 04 | Herding cats: Modelling, simulation, testing, and data mining for weak memory | 2014 | 227 | Article |
| 05 | Toward Large-Scale Vulnerability Discovery using Machine Learning | 2016 | 216 | Conference paper |
| 06 | ReDeBug: Finding unpatched code clones in entire OS distributions | 2012 | 208 | Conference paper |
| 07 | THERMINATOR: THERMal heavy-IoN generATOR | 2006 | 190 | Article |
| 08 | Flip feng Shui: Hammering a needle in the software stack | 2016 | 189 | Conference paper |
| 09 | A new monotonic, clone-independent, reversal symmetric, and condorcet-consistent single-winner election method | 2011 | 174 | Article |
| 10 | FreeContact: Fast and free software for protein contact prediction from residue co-evolution | 2014 | 134 | Article |
Role-based Category = Modeling, Simulation, and Data Analytics
There are Research Software among the 10 oldest publications?
| # | Title | Research software? |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Including diagnostic information in configuration models (2000) | Yes: Smodels lang |
| 02 | Demudi: The Debian Multimedia Distribution (2001) | Yes: Debian-derivative |
| 03 | Statistically based postprocessing of phylogenetic analysis by clustering (2002) | Yes: Matlab lang |
| 04 | Towards intelligent support for managing evolution of configurable software product families (2003) | Yes: Product-line prototype |
| 05 | A Framework for Blood Flow Analysis and Research (2003) | Yes: Ultrasound Doppler |
| 06 | Open source software development should strive for even greater code maintainability (2004) | No |
| 07 | Managing volunteer activity in free software projects (2004) | No |
| 08 | Can we trust cryptographic software? Cryptographic flaws in GNU privacy guard v1.2.3 (2004) | No |
| 09 | Demonstration abstract: BNF converter (2004) | Yes: BNF converter |
| 10 | Configurable coprocessing with an ARC-PCI board (2004) | Yes: Hardware + Linux driver |
(Yes = 7, No = 3)
Most active researchers
Who are the most active researchers, measured by number of published papers?
| # | Author | N. of papers | The oldest paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Zacchiroli S. | 13 papers | The Ultimate Debian Database: Consolidating bazaar metadata for Quality Assurance and data mining (2010) |
| 2 | German D.M. | 10 papers | A Model to Understand the Building and Running Inter-Dependencies of Software (2007) |
| 3 | Di Cosmo R. | 9 papers | Predicting upgrade failures using dependency analysis (2011) |
| 4 | Robles G. | 9 papers | Evolution of volunteer participation in libre software projects: Evidence from debian (2005) |
“Among the most active researchers, there are publications with studies about Debian or for Debian.”
Active countries
Which countries are contributing the most, based on the affiliations of the researchers?
(MCP: Multiple Country Publications, SCP: Single Country Publications)
Top-relevant terms and frequent words
What are the most relevant terms and concepts in the field?
Future work and next steps:
- Current study:
- Add more databases besides Scopus: WOS, Pubmed, etc.
- Finish the bibliometric analysis.
- New study:
- Cross bibliometric data with upstream source code metrics.
- Cross bibliometric data with Debian source package metadata.
Thanks!
joenio@joenio.me
This presentation is available at:
http://joenio.me/debconf2025-academictrack-talk
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Presentation history
Where and when this presentation was done
- 15 July 2025, Brest, DebConf25