New Gold Standard Established for Open and Reproducible Research

by  Sarah Collins, University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge computer science researchers have shared more than 200 GB of data and 20,000 lines of code with the hope that this type of openness will be adopted by other fields, increasing the reliability of research results.

The field of computer science has embraced open access more than other disciplines, but as more and more organizations publish their results, the reliability of research results has come into question. “Due to commercial sensitivities, corporations are reluctant to make their code and data sets available when they publish in peer-reviewed journals,” says Matthew Grosvenor, a Ph.D. student from the university’s Computer Laboratory.

“But without the code or data sets, the results are irrelevant–we can’t know whether an experiment is the same if we try to recreate it.” In releasing their data, the Cambridge researchers have gone several steps beyond typical open access standards. All of the experimental figures and tables in the final version of their paper, which describes a new method of boosting data centers’ efficiency, are clickable.

“We think that this is the way forward for all scientific publications and so we’ve put our money where our mouth is and done it,” Grosvenor says.  Read the article