Recognising contributions COSIMA model configurations and simulations

COSIMA
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This post is a follow-up to our COSIMA meeting discussion on how we might keep track of people who have contributed to model development / simulations, along with their preferences for how (or if) they’d like to be acknowledged.

At the meeting, we agreed that it would be valuable to have a more formal way of recognising contributions to model configuration and simulation efforts. COSIMA’s culture of sharing configurations and output has enabled amazing science and helped grow our community — and we’d love to ensure that this collaborative culture continues.

We recognise that the level of attribution people would like will vary depending on their contribution and personal preference. Our proposal is to collate these attribution requests and share a list at a COSIMA meeting every 3 months. This would ensure visibility, encourage consistency, and give recognition to contributors.

We’re seeking input in two ways:

1. Your thoughts on the attribution proposal:
Do you have suggestions or thoughts on the idea?

2. Technical help in implementing it:
We’ve discussed adding a field (or using an existing unused one) to the metadata.yaml file for each simulation. This would be a free text field where the names of contributors could be listed along with any specific attribution requests (e.g. acknowledgement, request for coauthorship, timeframe etc). We would then need a tool to extract these fields from all the metadata.yaml files into a spreadsheet for us to share at quarterly COSIMA meetings.

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Totally agree it is important that contributions are acknowledged appropriately.

From a purely technical point of view, we have a schema for metadata.yaml that we use to validate the file is correct, and use to design software so that it is consistent:

In this case the software is payu and the ACCESS-NRI intake catalogue.

So if you want to add a field we’ll need to update the schema.

For that reason my preference would be to use an existing field, especially if the contribution text is fairly free form.

You might also want to consider how that information is presented. For example is it made obvious through the intake catalogue? Do you want it included in all intake datasets? In which case it might make sense to make it a separate field.

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