Welcome 👋

Have you ever stumbled through a paper with insufficient documentation or unclear data? Or are you struggling to replicate your own analyses? You are not alone! While we all strive for research reproducibility, this is not always easy.

On the 14^th October 2025, we gather for the first ReproHack organized by Utrecht University, to tackle the challenges of research reproducibility head-on. Join us to dig into exciting science and grow your reproducibility skills!

What is a ReproHack?

A ReproHack, or Reproducibility Hackathon, is a sandbox environment for practicing research reproducibility, where participants discover what it truly means to make their work reproducible

During a ReproHack, participants attempt to reproduce published research of their choice from a list of proposed papers with publicly available associated code and data. Participants get to work with other people’s material in a low pressure environment and record their experiences on a number of key aspects, including reproducibility, transparency and reusability of materials. At the end of the day we regroup, share our experiences and give feedback to the authors.

Besides evaluating the analysis of papers, this hackaton is also about working together, networking and learning from each other!

Disclaimer: It’s imperative to note that ReproHacks are by no means an attempt to criticise or discredit work. We see reproduction as beneficial scientific activity in itself, with useful outcomes for authors and valuable learning experiences for the participants and the research community as a whole.

	Benefit for Authors Receive valuable feedback on the reproducibility of your work. Appreciation for your efforts in making your work reproducible. Opportunity to engage others with your research. Benefit for Participants Practical experience in reproducibility with real published materials and the opportunity to explore different tools and strategies. Inspiration from working with other people’s code and data. An appreciation t that opening up your work for more people to engage with is the best way to help improve it. An appreciation that reproducibility has community value beyond just the validation of the results. For example, access to such materials increases the potential for reuse and understanding of the work. Network and make connections across disciplines within the faculty community. Benefit for the whole research community Capacity building in reproducibility by assessing of how reproducible papers are ‘out of the box’. Evaluation of how successful current practices are and for what purpose. Identification of what works and where the most pressing weaknesses in our approaches are. Establishment of valuable connections,  promoting interdisciplinary collaborations and community building.

Two ways to participate

Nominate a paper Opening up your work for more people to engage with is the best way to help improve it! We especially encourage proposals from researchers from the faculty that have submitted a paper and would like to test it reproducibility. Do you want to dig into the code of another paper that is not yours? That’s is also ok, but we encourage proponents to seek consent from the original authors for their nominations. We invite nominations for papers that have both associated code and data publicly available.  All proposed papers will be assembled and showcased in the event site before selection. Why having my paper reviewed? Assessing whether your paper is truly reproducible is extremely difficult until someone else actually tries to reproduce it. Not only can this pick up minor setup differences that you wouldn’t be able to test on your own computer but it also opens the work up to feedback from a variety of experiences and perspectives. The feedback can help improve the submitted work but help guide how you produce future work. More broadly, submitting your work and letting others work with it gives opportunity for the academic community to consider what form such associated research materials should take and how we want to be able to use them.   LIST A PAPER TO HACK

Reproduce  Join us on the Reprohack day and learn more about reproducibility, working with real code and data. You will be able to select the paper you want to hack from a list of proposed papers and tackle it individually or as part of a team. Feedback forms and a collaborative hackpad will be available to keep track of discussions and links to any outputs from our sessions.   Should you finish reproducing the paper quickly, you can explore the work more deeply, running new analysis, creating new plots or replicating results with different tools. Some contributions could even be suitable for publication in the ReScience C journal.     REGISTER AS PARTICIPANT  (Follow the link and select the ReproHack from the list of activities of the FAIR-R and Open Data Week)

Agenda

Time	Event
13:15	Welcome and Orientation
13:20	TALK: Tips and Tricks for Reproducing and Reviewing.
13:45	Indications for the day
13:50	Break out in groups and paper selection
14:00	Round I of ReproHacking (1 hr)
15:00	Coffee & Talk by guest speaker
15:30	Round II of ReproHacking  and Feedback form (1 hr)
16:30	Re-group and sharing of experiences
16:50	Feedback and Closing – Drinks

 

FAQ’s

What are the benefits of having my paper reviewed?

Assessing whether your paper is trully reproducible is extremely difficult until someone else actually tries to reproduce it. Not only can this pick up minor setup differences that you wouldn’t be able to test on your own computer but it also opens the work up to feedback from a variety of experiences and perspectives. The feedback can help improve the submitted work but help guide how you produce future work.

More broadly, submitting your work and letting others work with it gives opportunity for the academic community to consider what form such associated research materials should take and how we want to be able to use them.

What if my paper requires proprietary software?

We also encourage analyses based on open source tools as we cannot guarantee participants will have access to specialised licenced software. However, we still accept papers that require proprietary software. The only hindrance is that we can’t guarantee participants with licenses to the required software. We suggest to highlight any such software requirements in the Software requirements section of your paper submission.

 What if my paper requires High Performance Computing (HPC)?

The current ReproHack format involves participants joining events using their own computers.  If you do submit a computationally intensive paper, please make sure to indicate if HPC is needed and supply any know details about computational requirements in the Compute Requirements  section.

As author, do I need to work on my own paper during the Reprohack day?

While participation of authors is not required, we welcome interaction by authors. If you participate on the hackathon you can choose to join any hack team, though we still encourage you to make contact during the day with the team working on your paper.