The organizations and researchers producing research software face a common problem of making their software sustainable beyond funding provided by a single research project. This is addressed by research software engineers through building communities around their software, providing appropriate licensing, creating reliable and reproducible research software, making it sustainable and impactful, promoting, and ensuring that the research software is easy to adopt in research workflows, etc. As a result, numerous practices and guidelines exist to enhance research software quality, reusability, and sustainability. However, there is a lack of a unified framework to systematically integrate these practices and help organizations and research software developers refine their development and management processes. Our paper aims at bridging this gap by introducing a novel framework: RSMM. It is designed through systematic literature review and insights from interviews with research software project experts. In short, RSMM offers a structured pathway for evaluating and refining research software project management by categorizing 79 best practices into 17 capabilities across 4 focus areas. From assessing code quality and security to measuring impact, sustainability, and reproducibility, the model provides a complete evaluation of a research software project maturity. With RSMM, individuals as well as organizations involved in research software development gain a systematic approach to tackling various research software engineering challenges. By utilizing RSMM as a comprehensive checklist, organizations can systematically evaluate and refine their project management practices and organizational structure.

翻译：从事研究软件开发的机构与研究人员面临一个共性问题：如何使软件在单一研究项目的资助期结束后仍能持续发展。研究软件工程师通过以下方式应对这一挑战：围绕软件构建用户社区、提供适当的许可协议、开发可靠且可复现的研究软件、确保其可持续性与影响力、积极推广软件，并保障软件能便捷地融入科研工作流程等。因此，目前已有大量旨在提升研究软件质量、可重用性与可持续性的实践指南。然而，现有实践缺乏统一框架来系统整合这些指南，以帮助机构和研究软件开发人员优化其开发与管理流程。本文旨在通过引入新型框架RSMM填补这一空白。该框架基于系统性文献综述以及对研究软件项目专家的访谈洞见设计而成。简而言之，RSMM通过将79项最佳实践归类为4个重点领域的17项能力，为评估和改进研究软件项目管理提供了结构化路径。从代码质量与安全评估到影响力、可持续性及可复现性度量，该模型能对研究软件项目的成熟度进行全面评估。借助RSMM，参与研究软件开发的个人及机构获得了一套应对各类研究软件工程挑战的系统化方法。通过将RSMM作为综合性检查清单，机构能够系统评估并优化其项目管理实践与组织结构。