TY - JOUR
T1 - On code sharing and model documentation of published individual and agent-based models
AU - Janssen, Marco A.
AU - Pritchard, Calvin
AU - Lee, Allen
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Rachael Gokool, Yee-Yang Hsieh, Juan Rodriguez, and Christy Contreras for entering metadata, for Christine Nguyen and Dhuvil Patel for software development, and Cindy Huang for contacting corresponding authors. We acknowledge financial support for this work from the National Science Foundation , grant numbers 0909394 and 1210856 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2020/12
Y1 - 2020/12
N2 - Being able to replicate research results is the hallmark of science. Replication of research findings using computational models should, in principle, be possible. In this manuscript, we assess code sharing and model documentation practices of 7500 publications about individual-based and agent-based models. The code availability increased over the years, up to 18% in 2018. Model documentation does not include all the elements that could improve the transparency of the models, such as mathematical equations, flow charts, and pseudocode. We find that articles with equations and flow charts being cited more among other model papers, probably because the model documentation is more transparent. The practices of code sharing improve slowly over time, partly due to the emergence of more public repositories and archives, and code availability requirements by journals and sponsors. However, a significant change in norms and habits need to happen before computational modeling becomes a reproducible science.
AB - Being able to replicate research results is the hallmark of science. Replication of research findings using computational models should, in principle, be possible. In this manuscript, we assess code sharing and model documentation practices of 7500 publications about individual-based and agent-based models. The code availability increased over the years, up to 18% in 2018. Model documentation does not include all the elements that could improve the transparency of the models, such as mathematical equations, flow charts, and pseudocode. We find that articles with equations and flow charts being cited more among other model papers, probably because the model documentation is more transparent. The practices of code sharing improve slowly over time, partly due to the emergence of more public repositories and archives, and code availability requirements by journals and sponsors. However, a significant change in norms and habits need to happen before computational modeling becomes a reproducible science.
KW - Agent-based modeling
KW - Individual-based modeling
KW - Open science
KW - Replicability
KW - Reuse
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U2 - 10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104873
DO - 10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104873
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85091257739
SN - 1364-8152
VL - 134
JO - Environmental Modelling and Software
JF - Environmental Modelling and Software
M1 - 104873
ER -