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

Nüst, Daniel

Abstract

The Executable Research Compendium (ERC) is a concept for packaging data, code, text, and user interface configurations in a single package to increase transparency, reproducibility, and reusability of computational research. This article introduces the ERC reproducibility service (ERS) for a publication workflow 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 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 investigating and understanding of computational workflows during peer review. We derive lessons learned and challenges for future scholarly publishing of computer-based geospatial research.