From owner-chemistry ^at^ ccl.net Wed Oct 19 04:08:01 2011 From: "Konrad Hinsen hinsen^^cnrs-orleans.fr" To: CCL Subject: CCL: Science code manifesto - just publish the code Message-Id: <-45690-111019031617-22435-fHCrGHo0rsawQxH2erEMuQ^-^server.ccl.net> X-Original-From: Konrad Hinsen Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed; delsp=yes Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:16:02 +0200 Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v936) Sent to CCL by: Konrad Hinsen [hinsen**cnrs-orleans.fr] On 18 oct. 11, at 20:32, Vincent Leroux vincent.leroux- -loria.fr wrote: > Wherever access to the code is necessary to reproduce results, it > *must* be provided one way or another (e.g. as supporting > information) if it is not freely available already, this is just > plain obvious to me. > > Wondering why a manifesto would be needed in order to do just that... It is needed because "just that" does not happen today. I get a lot of computational science papers to review, but none of them had any code attached (not even small analysis scripts), nor any explanation of how I could obtain it. Even for my own articles, I rarely provide scripts because most journals don't want them. One day I'll put all that on my Web site. As a reviewer, I insist that authors provide a full explanation of all algorithms they use (usually through literature references of course), and that they state which versions of which programs were used. I often ask them to consider making code and data available, but that has happened only in one case. I would like to be able to request such information more firmly, but I don't see much of a basis for that at the moment: it's neither a general habit nor something encouraged by the author guidelines of the major scientific journals. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Konrad Hinsen Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire, CNRS Orléans Synchrotron Soleil - Division Expériences Saint Aubin - BP 48 91192 Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France Tel. +33-1 69 35 97 15 E-Mail: research at khinsen dot fastmail dot net http://dirac.cnrs-orleans.fr/~hinsen/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------