Portal/TA1/guidelines/authors

Guidelines for authors of computer experiments in computer algebra

This is still work in progress, so the information may be incomplete. Feedback is very welcome.

Quick start

If your publication relies on computer experiments or calculations, you need to

• Publish your data
• Publish your code
• Write down all software versions
• Document your hardware setup

Motivation

The main motivation is to make communication of computer experiments more efficient:

• It should be easy for other mathematicians to reproduce the results of computer experiments. The hard part should always be the mathematics.
• Computer experiments have become an integral part of publications, even in pure mathematics. Thus it is necessary to ensure high quality such that this part of a paper may also be refereed.
• High quality documentation ensures that a computer experiment may be reproduced 100 years from now, even if it means reimplementation in new software.

Environment

This section contains pointers what needs to be recorded for other people to be able to understand and reproduce the experiment.

Hardware

• Type of machine if applicable
• CPU information
• Memory information

Software

• Operating system with version
• Software used with version

Experiment details

• Collect all your code
• Make sure your code is easy to read, adhering to the principles of clean code is a good idea
• It may take some time for a reader to understand your code. It should not take time to make it run. Provide a central script that reruns your experiment.
• Provide any in- and output data from your experiment. If it is large consider uploading it to a service like zenodo.
• If your environment is complicated to set up, consider providing a Docker container or a Vagrant virtual machine.