Reproducible and Open GIScience
- To what extent does open-source GIS help solve the problems of the reproducibility crisis for geography? How?
- Are there problems with reproducibility and replicability in geography that open-source GIS cannot help solve?
The nature of open-source GIS is to have people cooperate with each other to get work done. It involves communication between different developers, and communications facilitate the reproducibility of work. Like what is mentioned in the reading, Von Hippel refers to the open-source community as an innovation community, where the innovation is led by the user. The developers create stuff that the users apply and build onto them, and the users become the developers and publish their work (so on and so forth). The way this community works and the way it produces new products require the developers to make their work in a way that is reproducible and replicable, in order to let the next developer build on what exists and propagate the process. Poor quality of documentation in some open-source projects will create problems for non-technical users of the code and may keep potential new developers from entering the project. I think the value of the community and all who are inside the community pressure and supervise each other so that all developers are aware of their reproducibility, and as a result, avoid reproducibility crisis.
There are some problems that open-source GIS will find handy to solve, and I believe a great number of these problems are impeded by the data collection step. There are studies that may involve using sensitive data, such as data of personal information or confidential data, which are impossible to make available to the public. Especially in the field of GIS where some data may be mingled with geospatial intelligence, military, and private sectors. It is unable to share these data with the greater public and therefore the study will have problems with reproducibility. Another problem, which might have less effect, is data or software compatibility. Differences in software functionality and data format can create challenges for replication efforts. For example, some files that work in ESRI may have trouble opening them in QGIS, and it would be a hassle to convert files for people who have no access to ESRI. This also leads to the fact that different people in the community will have different hardware and software accessibilities.
Bibliography
[Rey, S. J. 2009. Show me the code: Spatial analysis and open source. Journal of Geographical Systems 11 (2):191–207.] (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10109-009-0086-8)