What about model data? Best practices for preservation and replicability

However, many researchers face the challenge of determining what data to preserve and share and where to preserve and share those data. This can be especially challenging for those who run dynamical models, which can produce complex, voluminous data outputs, and have not considered what outputs may need to be preserved and shared as part of the project design.

This manuscript presents findings from the NSF EarthCube Research Coordination Network project titled "What About Model Data? Best Practices for Preservation and Replicability" (modeldatarcn.github.io/). These findings suggest that if the primary goal of sharing data are to communicate knowledge, most simulation-based research projects only need to preserve and share selected model outputs along with the full simulation experiment workflow.