Opening Reproducible Research II

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Christian Kray; Professor Dr. Edzer Pebesma; Dr. Beate Tröger
• Subject Area: Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Geoinformatics, Cartography
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 415851837

The main goal of the project "Opening Reproducible Research (ORR)" was to design, implement, and evaluate Executable Research Compendia (ERC). An ERC encapsulates a scientific paper with the used data and software to enable third parties to reproduce the original research results (e.g. figures, tables). It enables interaction with these results and the recombination of ERCs with other datasets. Although reviewed as a high-risk experiment for providing reproducibility, all the objectives of ORR were achieved. The results of ORR led to a high visibility in the scientific community and to a strong interest by publishers who want to introduce ERCs in concrete cooperations. This follow-up proposal, O2R2, builds on the results from ORR, particularly the prototypes, specifications and the insights gained regarding the needs and practices of scientists. O2R2 contributes to changing the way scientific results are communicated and disseminated by realising a broad-based deployment of the developed concepts and solutions in pilot applications, by engaging various stakeholders, and by creating user incentives. Hence, O2R2 facilitates open access by transforming (i) technology, (ii) organisations and workflows, and (iii) individual behaviour. O2R2 will transform technology of scientific publishing by enhancing publications in three pilot applications. Two pilots target special journal issues with publishers, where ERCs are provided as supplementary assets enhancing review and reading workflows. The third pilot implements ERCs as the main object of scientific publication and integrates it with the Open Journal Systems (an open publishing software). Organisations and workflows will be transformed by explicitly tackling barriers for the adoption of ERCs by infrastructures operators and publishers, and by enabling geospatial analyses with large datasets. We will transform individual behaviour by developing tools that make it easier for scientists to create and work with ERCs. In ORR, we identified some key barriers hindering open reproducible research: immediate benefits for preparing code and data are unclear, and even if both are available, we found that research results are not necessarily reproducible when we tried reproduce geoscientific papers. In O2R2, we thus aim to lower barriers for the creation of ERCs, and to create tangible incentives for researchers to publish ERCs. Throughout the entire project, usage data is collected to derive operational requirements of the new publication workflow and infrastructure. In combination with several user studies, this data will enable a thorough evaluation of ERCs and their potential. O2R2 takes the ERC from laboratory conditions out into the real world of scientific practice in order to sustainably contributes to the open access transformation.

• DFG Programme: Science Communication, Research Data, eResearch (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• International Connection: Finland, Netherlands
• Cooperation Partners: Maarten Cleeren; Dr. Albert Geukes; Tomi Kauppinen; Professor Dr. Werner Kuhn; Dr. Wolfgang Peters-Kottig; Dr. Simon Scheider