ActivePapers: a platform for publishing and archiving computer-aided research

The lack of replicability and reproducibility of scientific studies based on computational methods has lead to serious mistakes in published scientific findings, some of which have been discovered and publicized recently. Many strategies are currently pursued to improve the situation. This article reports the first conclusions from the ActivePapers project, whose goal is the development and application of a computational platform that allows the publication of computational research in a form that enables installation-free deployment, encourages reuse, and permits the full integration of datasets and software into the scientific record. The main finding is that these goals can be achieved with existing technology, but that there is no straightforward way to adapt legacy software to such a framework.