A Web service for executable research compendia enables reproducible publications and transparent reviews in geospatial sciences

The executable research compendium (ERC) is a concept for packaging data, code, text, and user interface configurations in a single unit to increase transparency, reproducibility, and reusability of computational research. This article introduces the ERC reproducibility service (ERS), which supports publication workflows enhanced by ERCs. The ERS connects with existing scientific infrastructures and was deployed and tested with a focus on data and visualisation methods for open geospatial sciences. We describe the architecture of a reference implementation for the reproducibility service, including the created Web API. We critically discuss both the project set-up and features of ERC and ERS, and we examine them in the light of various classifications for reproducible research. The ERC and ERS are found to be a powerful tool to improve reproducibility and, thereby, enable better investigation and understanding of computational workflows during peer review. We derive lessons learned and challenges for future scholarly publishing of computer-based geospatial research.