Reproducibility, closely related to replicability and repeatability, is a major principle underpinning the scientific method For the findings of a study to be reproducible means that results obtained by an experiment or an observational study or in a statistical analysis of a data set should be achieved again with a high degree of reliability when the study is replicated. There are different kinds of replication but typically replication studies involve different researchers using the same methodology. Only after one or several such successful replications should a result be recognized as scientific knowledge.
With a narrower scope, reproducibility has been introduced in computational sciences: Any results should be documented by making all data and code available in such a way that the computations can be executed again with identical results.
In recent decades, there has been a rising concern that many published scientific results fail the test of reproducibility, evoking a reproducibility or replication crises.
