There is a wealth of open source software in use across scientific communities but the value of its contribution to science is under-estimated, under-utilised and often poorly coordinated. Some websites such as ohloh (http://www.ohloh.net/) offer directories that attempt to rate the quality and impact of open source software projects, but currently lack the means of attracting developers and users from academic communities and harvesting a large enough body of essential data to make their results meaningful for the scientific research environments. Being able to aggregate the power of cataloguing services, trends and statistics would provide a sound basis for judging the popularity of specific software, enable social-networking amongst users and developers, create active communities and promote citizen science. Rating software and providing a means by which it can be cited in a similar manner to publications and datasets would enable the authors to gain merit and career advancement for their work and accelerate the open source software movement in scientific communities. Being able to quantify the impact of open source software would allow funding agencies, companies and venture capitalists to better target their investments leading to a more vibrant and sustainable open source market for open science.

In December 2011 EMI, the European Middleware Initiative, together with EGI, StratusLab, OpenAIRE, iMarine and other scientific research projects have started a collaboration to promote and coordinate the development and use of open source software for scientific research.

The new initiative, called ScienceSoft, aims to supports research communities in finding the software they need and get rapidly in contact with people developing and using it already. It also aims to assist software developers in promoting their products to a wider audience, establishing long-term support and collaboration policies.

The core concept of ScienceSoft is the marketplace, where people can share ideas, software, services, requirements, comments and realiably match their scientific research needs with available products and expertise.