Workshop 'Reaping the benefits of open and reproducible research' @ AGILE '26

About

AGILE has made significant steps towards more open and reproducible research (ORR) publications, overall improving the quality of the scientific contributions from and for the community, such as reproducible publications at the conference, or reproducibility education at PhD schools. However, recent observations have shown that the rate of improvement of the conference papers‘ reproducibility has slowed. This begs the question if a plateau has been reached, while the benefits in terms of greater uptake of results has yet to materialize. This workshop aims to address both issues: whether a plateau has been reached in terms of reproducibility, and if so, what the implications are; and what we can do to increase uptake of established or new ORR practices in GIScience.

Objective(s)

1. To determine whether further improvements or extensions to the AGILE reproducibility guidelines and reviews of AGILE proceedings are necessary, desirable, and feasible. And if so, to develop concrete actions on how to do so.

2. To determine strategies and develop concrete action items on how to increase the uptake of open research practices beyond citations (e.g., replications) for AGILE research papers in the conference proceedings and beyond.

Planned outcome(s)

1. A short white paper on the future of ORR at AGILE.

2. Action plan for reproducing and replicating one or several AGILE full papers.

Worhshop format

The workshop is open for all researchers, whether they have a lot of experience in open and reproducible research practices, or none at all. We will start with a 15 minute introduction to bring everyone to the same page, before participants can share their experiences with ORR in general and at AGILE in particular, first by filling in a short, structured survey, before engaging in open discussion based on the findings. We will work collaboratively on a white paper that addresses objective 1, before moving on to objective 2. Here we invite participants to pitch for a paper to replicate. The workshop organizers will provide at least one suggestion as well. Based on these suggestions, we form groups of interested participants to brainstorm about research designs for the replication studies. We end the workshop with forming one or more groups of researchers willing to go forward with one or more such replication studies, similar to https://doi.org/10.1080/15230406.2025.2591124, aiming to publish them within a year (ready for next AGILE conference).

The program of the half-day workshop will be:

• 30 minutes introduction / setting the scene / participant survey
• 60 minutes of writing the short white paper / position statement

Short break followed by

• 15 minutes (total) of up to 6 pitches for replication studies
• 60 minutes group work on research design around the pitched studies
• 15 minutes wrap-up and moving forward