Here at CoMSES, one of our primary goals are to improve the practice of computational modeling, which includes preserving computational models in our model library. Our model library provides a repository for researchers to deposit their software for public accessibility and future access. But why archive your model?
There are a few reasons:
- Your model is retained and remains available for the future.
- Depositing your model enables your research to be reproduced, replicated, and reused by your future self and other researchers. In the long term, depositing your model also serves as a valuable historical record.
- Methods do not produce your results, software does
- When you publish your results in a paper, you follow the methods described in your publication, but the results are produced from your model. As such, making your model available allows others to validate your results.
- Improve both quality and trust
- Transparency promotes trust in your research. If errors are identified in your model, it can be used as an opportunity to improve the quality of your code for the next time.
- Get credit for your model
- When you deposit your model with CoMSES, you can request a unique DOI for your model after it passes CoMSES peer review. This model can then be cited and referenced by yourself and other researchers.
- Save time
- You can direct other researchers interested in your work to your deposited model without having to find the exact version of the model that you used to generate results in a publication.
- Your funder or publisher requires or recommends you to
- With growing support towards open access science, many funders and publishers are recommending and mandating that research outputs are distributed online, free of cost.
Sharing your model in a digital repository can seem daunting. Here are some common concerns:
- Others might publish results based on your model before you do
- CoMSES allows you to embargo your model until after your publication. You can choose to do this during the archiving process. Your model will be private and accessible only by you until the date of your choice.
- Others might commercialize your software or disclose innovative aspects of your software
- You can also control what others can do with your model through software licensing. You can read more about choosing the right license here: https://choosealicense.com/
- Your code is too messy!
- If your model produces results that you can publish, the code is good enough to be deposited.
You can read more about depositing software for researchers in the following places:
Software Deposit Guidance for Researchers
Publish your computer code: it is good enough
Good Enough Practices for Scientific Computing
Content referenced from
Michael Jackson (ed.) (07 August 2018). Software Deposit: Why deposit software (Version 1.0). Zenodo. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1327333. Online: https://softwaresaved.github.io/software-deposit-guidance/WhyDepositSoftware.html.