CAA/SSLA roundtable at CAA 2019, Kraków (S03)

Organised by Martin Hinz, Clemens Schmid and Sophie Schmidt

When: 2019/04/24, 16:00-18:00
Where: Auditorium Maximum of the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, seminar room, level 2 Here you may find the protocol

Discussants

Martin Hinz (University of Bern)
Joe Roe (University of Copenhagen)
Iza Romanowska (Barcelona Supercomputing Center)
Sophie Schmidt (University of Cologne)
Clemens Schmid (Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz)
Lizzie Scholtus (University of Strasbourg)

Abstract

At last year’s CAA, during the session on R in Archaeology, a suggestion was made to set up a Special Interest Group on Scientific Scripting Languages in Archaeology (SIG SSLA). We would like to comply with this proposal at this year’s CAA. We would also like to take advantage of the forum to discuss the SIG’s goals and agenda in a round table.

A scripting language is a programming language that allows interaction with a software interpreter to perform operations on data. It does usually not require compilation and is therefore associated with a rapid and agile development style that is particularly suitable for research, analysis and visualization of scientific data. Scripting languages may include but are not limited to R, Netlogo, Stan, OxCal, Bash or Python.

The use of scripting languages enables the user to document every necessary step in a research pipeline. Conversely, the resulting scripts can be used to reproduce analyses by other researchers if the input data is also available. Even the initial software environment can be emulated. Scripting languages are therefore ideal for reproducible research. But reproducibility can go even further: ideally it also documents the scientific production process with all inductive and deductive steps of hypothesis formation. A modern and powerful way to achieve this is version control.

There is a clear demand for dialogue in the community to broaden the impact of these improved methodological approaches, considering they still have a quite small number of users. We ovffr a draft Statement of Purpose for the SIG to discuss in this session. It is based on an internet survey following the last international CAA: (https://sslarch.github.io/statement.html).

We invite participants to prepare a two-minute statement or comment about this paper in order to start the discussion, which will be divided into two thematic sections. One section will focus on the general topics outlined in the position paper: Which principles are essential for scientific programming? How should they be taught? How can quality control and sustainability be guaranteed? The second section will begin to define more clearly the objectives of the proposed SIG: Which instruments and platforms can be established? What support can be provided for the growth of a more open, inclusive and reproducible research software landscape?