EAGER: Developing a framework to identify and mitigate perceptual and technical barriers in code sharing to facilitate reproducible and transparent research

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This project will conduct exploratory research into the barriers and strategies for making research code publicly accessible. While there has been significant progress in making research datasets accessible for purposes of open science and reproducibility, code and other forms of software developed in research projects are less frequently made available persistently. In scientific research, it is not only imperative to publish a detailed description of the study design, methodology, results, and interpretation, but there is a pressing need to make all the research products (including code and software) publicly available, shareable, well documented, and organized to facilitate reproducible and transparent research. An important research product that is an essential element ensuring reproducible research is the analytic code used for the analysis. In contrast to sharing data, which is widely enforced by scientific journals and research organizations, there is limited guidance on code sharing which in addition to data represents an essential component of reproducible and rigorous research. The project will result in: A) Descriptive information which will be collected through one-to-one interviews through teleconferencing, as well as by distributing surveys across 5,000 randomly selected principal investigators who were supported by NSF and/or NIH, B) Recommendations for code sharing to be developed through a series of structured teleconferences with informed experts, notably editors of scientific journals with a strong interest in code sharing and reproducible research, and C) Formation of a Research Code Alliance (RCA) to develop a framework to mitigate perceptual and technical barriers in code sharing to facilitate reproducible and transparent research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.