The authors provide a list of the software they used (Globus Toolkit, OGSA-DAI, Java SDK, Apache Tomcat, Apache ANT, MySQL and Oracle) and for all of these (except the notable exception of OGSA-DAI) they had provided version numbers. Without my highly detailed knowledge of the OGSA-DAI project, it would have been impossible to determine what software was used.Įven if a researcher had determined which version of OGSA-DAI to use, they would have found that the version they needed is no longer readily available, and that the available releases are fundamentally different to the one they needed. However, the authors then talked of another component and a toolkit, which was only available with a completely different version of the software. Later in their paper, the authors mentioned a component that was specific to OGSA-DAI versions 2.5 to 6.

The authors had cited an OGSA-DAI paper that should have meant they were using a version of the software between OGSA-DAI 1 and 6. This required some difficult detective work. Like any researcher who would want to reproduce the research, I wanted to know which version of the software had been used in the paper. 1 Can I get a copy of the software that was used?įor many years I worked on a research project called OGSA-DAI (a novel framework for distributed data management), and I recently came across a paper in which OGSA-DAI forms a key component. I also look at the important distinction between describing the software that was used, and citing it. In this green paper, I give examples of the problems that can arise when reproducing someone else's research, and propose some practical approaches to resolving, or at least reducing, them.

Researchers face significant challenges when trying to understand, reproduce or reuse research in which software has played an integral part.

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