The prevalence of code sharing (Goldacre)

Another greatest hit from the Goldacare report, in the section on open working, “The prevalence of code sharing” (all material reused under OGL)

• “ONS covid reports: the team was unable to find any analytic code for the platform or covid analyses (but extensive and excellent open code training elsewhere)
• OpenSAFELY covid reports: all code for the platform, data management and analysis all shared automatically on GitHub (declaration of interest: BG is PI on OpenSAFELY)
• PHE covid reports: the team was unable to find any analytic code for PHE reports on topics such as ethnicity and COVID-19; but extensive code sharing for their (excellent) COVID-19 dashboards
• DECOVID (Turing / HDRUK PIONEER platform created for a wide range of covid research teams from a large number of universities): the team was unable to find code for the platform or analyses
• ICODA (HDRUK’s flagship COVID-19 data analysis platform initiated in June 2020): the team was unable to find code for the platform or analyses (but also no outputs to date)
• HDRUK / NHSD / BHF TRE: the team was unable to find code for the platform; but some scripts are shared for a paper describing the data accessible through it, and one research preprint (the platform’s only output to date)”

I love that they did this, but that’s not why I’m writing a blog post about. What I love is the assumption that you should be able to sit at your desk with a web browser and find this stuff. That’s what “open” should mean. I’m so sick to death of being told stuff is “open source” and then I ask where it is they say “I’ll email you a copy”.

I plaster my code all over the internet. I shove it in the face of everyone I can think of to shove it in the face of, because I want people to see it. This “open source but you have to go to a webinar and then email me three times” is for the birds