[OSGeo-Discuss] spatial-science good-practice exemplars?

[Tom Roche]

Tom Roche Fri, 29 May 2015 18:37:09 -0400[0]
> Nature Physics commentary [Hey and Payne 2015[1]] claiming that ''[one] of the first scientists to recognize the need for reproducibility in computational science was the geophysicist Jon Claerbout. As early as 1990, he set a goal of reproducibility for all the (non-open-access) reports coming out of his Stanford Exploration Project[2], identifying reproducibility as 'a way of organizing computational research that allows both the author and the reader of a publication to verify the reported results'[3].''

My original post reversed the footnoted links, which are corrected (and DOIed) below.

Tom Roche Fri, 29 May 2015 18:37:09 -0400[0]
> an ostensive/exemplary definition of ["spatial-science good-practice," (SSGP)] should be both feasible and useful.

E.g., Hey and Payne 2015 cite ATLAS[4] and CMS[5] (from CERN LHC) and CASTEP[6] (from a UK academic group) as examples of best-practice (e.g., most open-science) particle-physics projects. What would be examples of best-practice spatial-science projects?

NB: UK readers may find Hey and Payne 2015 especially interesting since much of its content is UK-oriented (probably because Payne is at Cambridge). E.g.,

Hey and Payne 2015[1]
>> [UK 'community' software] projects are exemplified by the Collaborative Computational Projects (CCPs) supported by a team at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The team assists universities in developing, maintaining and distributing computer programs, and in promoting the best computational methods. Each CCP focuses on a specific area of research and they are funded by the UK Research Councils. There are probably more than 1,000 individual researchers and research students supported by the CCPs.

...

>> the [UK] Research Councils have also recently changed their policy on software-development costs. In addition to providing support for the UK Software Sustainability Institute, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) now issues regular calls for proposals that are focused purely on either developing new and innovative software--adding novel functionality to existing software, or simply making widely used software packages more efficient and/or robust[7]. The EPSRC also now offers personal fellowships specifically for individuals who specialize in software development.

HTH, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>

[0]: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/2015-May/014272.html
[1]: Hey, T. and Payne, M.C., "Open science decoded," Nature Physics 11, 367–369 (2015) ; http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys3313
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Exploration_Project
[3]: http://sepwww.stanford.edu/data/media/public/sep//jon/repropreface.html
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS_experiment#Data_systems_and_analysis
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Muon_Solenoid#Collecting_and_collating_the_data
[6]: http://www.castep.org/CASTEP/CASTEP
[7]: https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/research/ourportfolio/themes/researchinfrastructure/subthemes/einfrastructure/software/