Imperial/Sheffield ReproHack - 9th March 2021

Join us for a ReproHack on Tues 9th March 2021. Pick a paper, try and reproduce its results and provide valuable feedback to the author(s).

About the event

Reproducibility is a fundamental aspect of research. With the increasing complexity of modern research processes, ensuring results are easily reproducible is an area that has become increasingly high-profile.

The growth in open data and open source software and the wide array of platforms available to facilitate sharing of data and code mean that reproducing results of research based on open source software and data should be more straightforward than ever before.

Is this actually the case? Join us on Tuesday 9th March, 10:00-17:00 to decide for yourself!

At this ReproHack event you'll have the opportunity to work alone or as part of group to select a paper from a directory of contributed publications and try to reproduce the results.

We'll also have a talk from a guest speaker, Dr Sarah Gibson (The Alan Turing Institute), on "Sharing Reproducible Computational Environments with Binder".

What is a ReproHack?

A ReproHack - reproducibility hackathon - is an event where participants aim to reproduce scientific results detailed in published papers. Workshop participants choose a paper and then have time to work alone, or as part of a group, to try and understand the paper and to reproduce its results, from published code and data. There are reporting back sessions during the day to give you an opportunity to update the organisers and other participants on your progress, and to get hints and tips to help you achieve your goal.

A ReproHack is a low-pressure environment that provides participants with the opportunity to work with real-world data and research software. It also provides the opportunity to network and learn from other researchers, RSEs and software engineers with a range of different technical and research experience.

The aim of a ReproHack is absolutely not to undermine or discredit researchers or their work. Researchers who have submitted papers to the ReproHack have voluntarily offered to have their work considered as part of the event because they understand the importance of reproducibility and are keen to learn from the feedback and advice you may be able to offer. This will help the authors of submitted papers to enhance their research outputs and to develop more reproducible research and publications in the future. We hope that you will also gain similar benefits by participating in this workshop.

Submitting a paper for consideration

Whether or not you plan to attend the workshop, you can still submit a paper and associated code and data to be included in the directory of available publications for participants to choose from.

You can submit a paper via this form: https://forms.gle/A3tvyU7GCXJh474W8

When submitting a paper, you will need to provide the following information:

  • Your name, the paper title and where it was published
  • An explanation of why we should attempt to reproduce this paper
  • URLs for the paper, data and code
  • A list of programming skills that would be useful to reproduce the paper

You can choose whether you want to receive feedback from anyone who attempts to reproduce your paper.

If you are keen to submit a paper but have questions, please contact Jeremy Cohen (jeremy.cohenATimperial.ac.uk).

How does it work?

We'll begin the workshop with a brief introduction to the collaboration environment we'll be using, followed by a short "icebreaker" exercise providing an opportunity to meet other attendees.

There will be an introduction to the ReproHack process itself and some details on how to go about selecting a suitable paper and reviewing and attempting to reproduce its results.

We will also have a talk from our guest speaker, Dr Sarah Gibson (The Alan Turing Institute), on "Sharing Reproducible Computational Environments with Binder".

Following this, the ReproHack will start with taking a look at the list of papers available to choose from, forming groups and selecting a paper to work on. We'll break for coffee and the ReproHacking will begin!

There will be the opportunity to work in online breakout rooms as part of a group, or to remain in a main space and work independently. There will also be a virtual coffee space where you can gather to chat with other participants.

During the day, there will be a lunch break and coffee breaks scheduled along with specific times scheduled to come together as a complete group and report back on progress to the other participants.

You can get further details by reading about a previous ReproHack event in this blog post.

Code of Conduct

Please familiarise yourself with the ReproHack Code of Conduct. By signing up to this event, you are agreeing to abide by this Code of Conduct when attending this event and in any interactions related to this event.

Registration

Please note that this event is only open to people based at Imperial College London, University of Sheffield or one of the institutions represented by the RSLondon Regional Research Software Community.

Registration for this event is via Eventbrite: https://ic-shef-reprohack.eventbrite.co.uk/

Data that you provide when registering for this workshop (your full name and email address) will be made available to the workshop organisers for the purposes of organising and running the workshop.

Please note that Eventbrite is a third-party Cloud service, and does not provide the level of information security and data protection for your data you would normally expect from a College information service. We expect you to provide your full name and email address in order to register for this event, and you may have to register with the Eventbrite service as a personal consumer. Eventbrite may ask you to create an account with them using at least your first name, last name and your email address. Their terms and conditions state (in summary) that by doing so “[paragraph 17.1] you acknowledge and agree that you grant them full right and licence to use this information for the purpose of operating their Services (including Eventbrite’s promotional and marketing services).” Please also note that Eventbrite is a company registered in the United States, and the data you provide to them is most likely to be kept on servers outside the UK/European Union. As a result, if you prefer not to use the services provided by Eventbrite to register for this event, as an alternative please contact members of the Imperial College London RSE Community Events group at rse-events@imperial.ac.uk directly, providing your full name and email address and we will add you to the registration list for the workshop.