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Low availability of code in ecology: A call for urgent action
Antica Culina1, Ilona van den Berg1,2, Simon Evans3,4
1Department of Animal Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology, NIOO-KNAW, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
Plos Biology
|July 30, 2020
Summary
Code sharing is crucial for reproducible ecological research, but only 27% of studies provide it, hindering transparency. Urgent action is needed to improve code availability and ensure research integrity.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Computational Biology
- Scientific Research Methods
Background:
- Transparent and reproducible research relies on accessible analytical code.
- Code sharing is increasingly encouraged or mandated by journals.
- Limited code availability can impede the verification and replication of scientific findings.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the current state of analytical code availability in ecological research.
- To evaluate the adherence to code-sharing policies in ecological journals.
- To identify code availability as a potential bottleneck for computational reproducibility.
Main Methods:
- A random sample of 346 nonmolecular ecological articles published between 2015 and 2019 was analyzed.
- Articles were examined for the availability of accompanying analytical code and data.
- The study considered articles published under journals with mandatory or encouraged code-sharing policies.
Main Results:
- Only 27% of eligible articles included accessible analytical code.
- Data availability was significantly higher, at 79% for eligible articles.
- Despite increased policy adoption (15% in 2015 to 75% in 2020), most authors did not share their code.
Conclusions:
- Code availability is a critical limiting factor for computational reproducibility in ecology.
- Existing code-sharing policies are not widely followed by researchers.
- Journals, institutions, and funding agencies must take action to improve code sharing practices.
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