[Insight-users] Publish your computer code: it is good enough

[Luis Ibanez]

Miguel,


    THANKS A LOT for sharing this link.

    This MUST BE MANDATORY reading
    for everybody in our field.


Important excerpts:
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"Programs written by scientists may be small scripts to draw charts and
calculate correlations, trends and significance, larger routines to process
and filter data in more complex ways, or telemetry software to control or
acquire data from lab or field equipment. Often they are an awkward mix of
these different parts, glued together with piecemeal scripts. What they have
in common is that, after a paper's publication, they often languish in an
obscure folder or are simply deleted. Although the paper may include a brief
mathematical description of the processing algorithm, it is rare for science
software to be published or even reliably preserved."

....

"So, openness improved both the code used by the scientists and the ability
of the public to engage with their work. This is to be expected. Other
scientific methods improve through peer review. The open-source movement has
led to rapid improvements within the software industry. But science source
code, not exposed to scrutiny, cannot benefit in this way."

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The "No excuses" section is just Great !!

Notable excerpts:

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Excuse #3:

"The code is valuable intellectual property that belongs to my institution."

"Really, that little MATLAB routine to calculate a two-part fit is worth
money? Frankly, I doubt it. Some code may have long-term commercial
potential, but almost all the value lies in your expertise. My industry has
a name for code not backed by skilled experts: abandonware. Institutions
should support publishing; those who refuse are blocking progress.


Excuse #4:

"It is too much work to polish the code."

"For scientists, the word publication is totemic, and signifies
perfectionism. But your papers need not include meticulous pages of Fortran;
the original code can be published as supplementary information, available
from an institutional or journal website."

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And the conclusion couldn't be better:

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"Governments, agencies and funding bodies have all called for transparency.
To make it happen, they have to be prepared to make the necessary policy
changes, and to pay for training, workshops and initiatives. But the most
important change must come in the attitude of scientists. If you are still
hesitant about releasing your code, then ask yourself this question: does it
perform the algorithm you describe in your paper? If it does, your audience
will accept it, and maybe feel happier with its own efforts to write
programs. If not, well, you should fix that anyway"

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http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/467753a.html



     Thanks for sharing the link !


         Luis.


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2010/10/15 Miguel Angel Rodriguez Florido <marf at itccanarias.org>

> Freely provided working code — whatever its quality — improves programming
> and enables others to engage with your research, says Nick Barnes.
>
> http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101013/full/467753a.html
>
> --
> Miguel Angel Rodríguez Florido
> Departamento de Ingeniería del Software
> División de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico
> INSTITUTO TECNOLOGICO DE CANARIAS, S.A. - GOBIERNO DE CANARIAS
> c/ Playa de Pozo Izquierdo s/n
> 35119 - Sta Lucia - Gran Canaria - Canary Islands - Spain
> www.itccanarias.org t: +34 928 727548/457462, f: +34 928 727517
> Miembro del Plan de Innovación Tecnológica MOTIVA (www.motivando.me)
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
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