What count as source code

[MarcoAJanssen]

There needs to be more clarity what needs to be archived: code, scripts for analysis, config file, input data (except if there are restrictions).
See also Towards the Geoscience Paper of the Future: Best Practices for Documenting and Sharing Research from Data to Software to Provenance. Gil, Y.; David, C. H.; Demir, I.; Essawy, B. T.; Fulweiler, R. W.; Goodall, J. L.; Karlstrom, L.; Lee, H.; Mills, H. J.; Oh, J.; Pierce, S. A; Pope, A.; Tzeng, M. W.; Villamizar, S. R.; and Yu, X. Earth and Space Science, 3. 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2015EA000136


[alee]

I think we want everything that facilitates execution besides datasets: configuration files, analysis scripts, workflow glue scripts, everything needed to properly run the model. Is this more of a reusability standards concern though?

[cmbarton]

Accessibility, documentation, and reuse are all tightly coupled. I think it is OK to put the digital artifacts that need to be curated and exposed to searches under accessibility. Documentation could focus more on content of some of those files. Reuse, then focuses more on how those files are packaged and deployed. Maybe we want to have some kind of preamble acknowledging these interrelationships.

[alee]

I'm starting to warm up to #128 in that we should be working with the same definitions as the FAIR principles, otherwise we will be creating confusion on otherwise well-established open science terms

Accessible
Once the user finds the required data (code), they need to know how can they be accessed, possibly including authentication and authorisation.
Accessible

A1. (Meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardised communications protocol

A1.1 The protocol is open, free, and universally implementable

A1.2 The protocol allows for an authentication and authorisation procedure, where necessary

A2. Metadata are accessible, even when the data are no longer available

The thing that is being made accessible is the "Computational model archive" and should be properly described with metadata that persists even if the archive is removed (for whatever reasons, legal etc).

The configuration files, output analysis scripts, code, and other objects in the computational model archive are pertinent to reuse, not accessibility. You don't need them or know anything about them unless you are intending to reuse the model in some way.

[platipodium]

The thing that is being made accessible is the "Computational model archive" and should be properly described with metadata that persists even if the archive is removed (for whatever reasons, legal etc).

Should we or should we not follow the FAIR distinction between data and metadata (model and meta data about the model), as they require metadata to be accessible even when the model code does no longer exist. Is this a new issue?

[platipodium]

The configuration files, output analysis scripts, code, and other objects in the computational model archive are pertinent to reuse, not accessibility. You don't need them or know anything about them unless you are intending to reuse the model in some way.

1. On the other hand, if you want to reuse the model, you need access to those things.
2. Often, it is not easy to distinguish this. As an example: we have a source code that does generic calculations based on configuration files that determine the functionality. So the configuration file determines the scientifif model. I'll make this a new issue We should not distinguish model code from model parameterization/configuration #192