MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4415381631 · doi:10.1145/3736731.3746136

Experience with Reproducibility and Consistency in Writing an Academic Paper

2025· article· W4415381631 on OpenAlexafffund
Joseph Wonsil, Nichole Boufford, Margo Seltzer

Bibliographic record

Venuenot available
Typearticle
Language
FieldDecision Sciences
TopicScientific Computing and Data Management
Canadian institutionsCritical Systems LabsUniversity of British Columbia
FundersNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
KeywordsConsistency (knowledge bases)ReproducibilityReliability (semiconductor)Measure (data warehouse)

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The iterative processes of writing code for an analysis and writing a paper based on that analysis often occur synchronously.Although this process is not inherently a problem, it can lead to inconsistencies between the data, the figures in the paper, and the prose that discusses those charts.We present our experience writing a paper that achieves consistent and reproducible results using standard tools from the reproducibility literature.We report the lessons learned from this experience and note that, while it adds additional upfront work and some mental overhead, we succeeded in satisfying our requirements.We then propose a research agenda to generate improved tools that will make these techniques widely accessible.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Direct model labels (unvalidated)

Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.

Model armCategoriesStudy designConfidence
gemmaMetaresearch
Domain: Reproducibility · Genre: Commentary
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Not applicablelow
gptMetaresearch
Domain: Reporting · Genre: Other
About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no
Other designlow
models splitAgreement compares identical category sets and study designs across arms.

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.280
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.608
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch
DomainCandidate signal: Reporting · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.720
Threshold uncertainty score0.888

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.2800.608
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.002
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.002
Bibliometrics0.0050.007
Science and technology studies0.0100.013
Scholarly communication0.0190.016
Open science0.0080.013
Research integrity0.0050.009
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0070.004

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.116
GPT teacher head0.422
Teacher spread0.306 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Labeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.

Metaresearch

The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.

Study designNot applicable · Other design
DomainReproducibility · Reporting
GenreCommentary · Other

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same topicScientific Computing and Data ManagementCategoryMetaresearchFrench-language works237,207