Thursday 3 March 2016

reproducible research - What is the difference between repeatability, replicability and reproducibility?


I have seen many instances where authors used the term "reproducibility" and "replicability" interchangeably in the social and behavioural sciences. Sometimes, they distinguish between the "repeatability" of experiments (same measurand/same measurement conditions) and "replicability" (same measurand/different conditions). If the three concepts are differentiated than, in most cases, there seems to be an inherent hierarchy between the three concepts:
repeatability < reproducibility < replicability Where a successful replication means that the same finding has been achieved with different data (or sometimes methods) and reproducibility means that it is possible to get the same results given the data and analytical means from the original study.


However, it occurs to me that at least in computer science this seems to be different.[1]

I am not aware of the situation in other fields. Therefore, I am curious which definitions of repeatability, reproducibility and replicability are used in other disciplines.


What are the definitions most commonly associated to repeatability, reproducibility and replicability in your field? Are the definitions the same but the concepts have substantially different meanings between fields e.g. because pseudo-random numbers generated by computer experiments are different from true randomness in biological experiments?




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