Removing Barriers to Reproducible Research in Archaeology

Reproducible research is being implemented at different speeds in different disciplines, and Archaeology is at the start of this journey. Reproducibility is the practice of reanalysing data by taking the same steps and producing the same or similar results. Enabling reproducibility is an important step to ensure research quality and validate interpretations. There are currently many barriers to moving towards reproducible research such as the skill level of researchers in the practices, software and infrastructure needed to do reproducible research and concerns relating to opening up research such as how to share sensitive data.

            In this article, we seek to introduce reproducible research in an understandable manner so that archaeologists can learn where and how to start improving the reproducibility of their research. We describe what reproducible archaeological research can look like and propose three different computational skill levels of reproducible workflows with examples. Finally, in an extensive appendix, we address common questions about reproducible research to remove the stigma about these issues and suggest ways to overcome them.

This articles has been reviewed and recommended by PCI Archaeology.