Abstract
Abstract. Version 1.1 of the editorial of Geoscientific Model Development (GMD), published in 2015 (GMD Executive Editors, 2015), introduced clarifications to the policy on publication of source code and input data for papers published in the journal. Three years of working with this policy has revealed that it is necessary to be more precise in the requirements of the policy and in the narrowness of its exceptions. Furthermore, the previous policy was not specific in the requirements for suitable archival locations. Best practice in code and data archiving continues to develop and is far from universal among scientists. This has resulted in many manuscripts requiring improvement in code and data availability practice during the peer-review process. New researchers continually start their professional lives, and it remains the case that not all authors fully appreciate why code and data publication is necessary. This editorial provides an opportunity to explain this in the context of GMD. The changes in the code and data policy are summarised as follows: The requirement for authors to publish source code, unless this is impossible for reasons beyond their control, is clarified. The minimum requirements are strengthened such that all model code must be made accessible during the review process to the editor and to potentially anonymous reviewers. Source code that can be made public must be made public, and embargoes are not permitted. Identical requirements exist for input data and model evaluation data sets in the model experiment descriptions. The scope of the code and data required to be published is described. In accordance with Copernicus' own data policy, we now specifically strongly encourage all code and data used in any analyses be made available. This will have particular relevance for some model evaluation papers where editors may now strongly request this material be made available. The requirements of suitable archival locations are specified, along with the recommendation that Zenodo is often a good choice. In addition, since the last editorial, an “Author contributions” section must now be included in all manuscripts.
Highlights
Version 1.1 of the editorial of Geoscientific Model Development (GMD), published in 2015 (GMD Executive Editors, 2015), introduced clarifications to the policy on publication of source code and input data for papers published in the journal
Geoscientific Model Development has policies which attempt to ensure that the source code for the model developments that are published is publicly available
Model input or output may be too large to be uploaded to any open archival system that is available to the authors. This presents a challenge: should GMD insist on publication of source code and data and not publish papers about some of the most important models in the geosciences, or should it accept such papers even though the rigour of those papers is compromised by the lack of code? At the time of writing, the GMD editors considered that the balance falls on the side of allowing publication
Summary
Geoscientific Model Development has policies which attempt to ensure that the source code for the model developments that are published is publicly available. Suppose a scientist develops a new advection scheme and implements it in an atmospheric dynamics model They publish a paper describing the new scheme and present the results of both idealised verification experiments and realistic simulations showing an improvement in forecast skill, but the code is not released. While this may appear to be a valuable contribution to modelling science, the complete algorithm including all approximations is needed in order to appreciate the sufficiency of the solution to the mathematical model. Everything required to run the experiment must be provided, apart from the model itself
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