Towards computational reproducibility: researcher perspectives on the use and sharing of software
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Digital Libraries
- Keywords
- software sustainability, reproducibility, research software, code, finding software, sharing software
- Copyright
- © 2018 Alnoamany et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Towards computational reproducibility: researcher perspectives on the use and sharing of software. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26727v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26727v1
Abstract
Research software, which includes both the source code and executables used as part of the research process, presents a significant challenge for efforts aimed at ensuring reproducibility. In order to inform such efforts, we conducted a survey to better understand the characteristics of research software as well as how it is created, used, and shared by researchers. Based on the responses of 215 participants, representing a range of research disciplines, we found that researchers create, use, and share software in a wide variety of forms for a wide variety of purposes, including data collection, data analysis, data visualization, data cleaning and organization, and automation. More participants indicated that they use open source software than commercial software. While a relatively small number of programming languages (e.g. Python, R, JavaScript, C++, Matlab) are used by a large number, there is a long tail of languages used by relatively few. Between group comparisons revealed that significantly more participants from computer science write source code and create executables than participants from other disciplines. Group comparisons related to knowledge of best practices related to software creation or sharing were not significant. While many participants indicated that they draw a distinction between the sharing and preservation of software, related practices and perceptions were often not aligned with those of the broader scholarly communications community.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ Computer Science for review.