Computational reproducibility in the geoscientific publication cycle

Computational reproducibility is possible when the data, procedures and software involved in a study is shared along with a scientific publication. When this can be done, it is still an open problem how this should be done: journals often mention the option, but give no hints to authors what they should provide and how they should wrap data, scripts and software. Mutual expectations from reviewers and readers on one side, and author on the other side, are largely missing.

The project "Opening Reproducible Research" (http://o2r.info/), of which the second phase is now funded by the DFG, has the ambition to formalise these expectation, and develops a workflow for journals such that it becomes easy for authors and reviewers to verify completeness ("one-click reproduce"), and easy for readers to re-execute the computational aspects of a publication. In addition, potential extensions are explored that include searching reproducible publications for data and procedures, and interaction with the settings of particular parameters resulting in updated figures, so that readers can experience a richer view than the classical fixed non-interactive pdf publication. In the second phase of this project, this infrastructure will be put into action by running special issues with journlas at existing publishers (Copernicus, Elsevier).