Cambridge University Press (the Press), one of the world’s leading University Presses, has partnered with Code Ocean, a platform that enables authors of articles in Press journals to publish and share code associated with their research and readers to view and run that code from within articles.
Code Ocean, a computational reproducibility platform, enables authors to openly publish their code on the platform, thereby making it free for others to access, download and share. Sharing the code and data underlying research is an important step in demonstrating that the results presented in research articles can be reproduced. Users can execute the code and view the results without having to install anything on their personal computer. They can even modify the code to see how the results change.
Political Science Research & Methods (PSRM) is the first Press journal adopting Code Ocean, an extension of the journal’s existing policy that requires authors to deposit data necessary to reproduce the results in their articles. A PSRM article with the Code Ocean widget embedded on Cambridge Core, the Press’s publishing platform, can be seen here. The widget enables readers to view and run the code without leaving Cambridge Core.
Simon Adar, CEO of Code Ocean, said: “We are thrilled that Cambridge University Press will be our first partner in the social sciences.
Research code extends well beyond STM and is pervasive in research across all disciplines. We are excited that Political Science Research & Methods will kickstart the partnership in bringing more transparency to the underlying code across Cambridge University Press’s variety of disciplines.”
Brigitte Shull, Director of Scholarly Communications Research and Development at the Press, said: “The availability of code associated with research is an important part of the movement towards data and research transparency and we want to support our authors in making their research more open and reproducible.
Our partnership with Code Ocean will enable authors of articles in PSRM, other journals and even books to make their code openly available and citable. For our readers, Code Ocean will make articles we publish richer and more interactive, enabling them to view and execute the code associated with the research while remaining on the Cambridge Core platform.”
Over the next few months, Code Ocean and the Press will work towards the integration of Code Ocean into the submission workflow of journals across various disciplines where code and data are used. In this integrated workflow, authors will be asked if there is code associated with the article during the submission process; those who select yes will be prompted to upload their code to Code Ocean. On publication, the compute capsule containing the code, data, and computational environment in Code Ocean will link to the related article on Cambridge Core. A Code Ocean widget visible on the article page will enable readers to view and run the code without leaving Cambridge Core.
Authors publishing with the Press are responsible for supplying and maintaining accurate records of data associated with their submitted manuscript. Authors can use Code Ocean for code and data, simulations, analysis, and algorithms. Due to the use of container technologies, the execution of that code is agnostic across different programming languages, versions, and operating systems.
