The “REDCap Consortium” is a community comprising academic, non-profit, and government institutions that have adopted REDCap and the cadre of software administrators at those sites who manage local installations of the platform and support local investigators using the software. In general, REDCap Consortium partner distribution tends to correlate with population density and regions of the world where biomedical research is supported. Exceptions include areas where U.S. export control laws prohibit licensing and also regions of the world where internet connectivity is extremely limited or where local government imposed internet accessibility restrictions reduce discoverability of the program. We describe here our phased model for developing and sharing research software and growing a community of adopting sites. In addition, we share lessons learned during the evolution of the REDCap software platform and the REDCap Consortium over the lifecycle of the program. While there are likely unique elements associated with REDCap and the REDCap Consortium model, we believe the core principles are generalizable and can benefit any software development team or sharing consortium.
