Tuesday, February 7, 2012

1202.1026 (Peter Teuben et al.)

Practices in Code Discoverability    [PDF]

Peter Teuben, Alice Allen, Robert J. Nemiroff, Lior Shamir
Much of scientific progress now hinges on the reliability, falsifiability and reproducibility of computer source codes. Astrophysics in particular is a discipline that today leads other sciences in making useful scientific components freely available online, including data, abstracts, preprints, and fully published papers, yet even today many astrophysics source codes remain hidden from public view. We review the importance and history of source codes in astrophysics and previous efforts to develop ways in which information about astrophysics codes can be shared. We also discuss why some scientist coders resist sharing or publishing their codes, the reasons for and importance of overcoming this resistance, and alert the community to a reworking of one of the first attempts for sharing codes, the Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL). We discuss the implementation of the ASCL in an accompanying poster paper. We suggest that code could be given a similar level of referencing as data gets in repositories such as ADS.
View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1202.1026

No comments:

Post a Comment