Process of transparent code and data sharing for horticultural decision models

Decision analysis and associated models provide decision support for farmers to reduce uncertainty under high-risk production conditions. These models are powerful tools to formulate recommendations for decision-making but often it is not clear how models are coded. Detailed explanations are needed to provide a transparent overview to readers by explaining how each code chunk contributed to the whole calculation process. We aimed to provide this information with all necessary files from our publication ‘Model-based evaluation of management options in ornamental plant nurseries’ by Ruett et al. 2020 (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122653) as additional supplementary materials in a git hub repository that can be accessed by the following link: https://github.com/marruett/Supplementary_Ruett_2020. The public repository provides transparent explanations and all files to run the model. The simulated outcomes are also stored within the repository in a html file generated by a RMarkdown document: http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/marruett/Supplementary_Ruett_2020/blob/main/The_R_Markdown.html. In addition, the html file illustrates the code for data visualization that enables reproduction of our figures. Code chunks can be used or optimized for own illustrations based on model outcomes.

Three of our institute’s researchers contributed to this work: Prof. Dr. Eike Luedeling, Dr. Cory Whitney, and Dr. Marius Ruett.

Many thanks to Stiftung Zukunft NRW for their support. Also thanks to the farmers and stakeholders from NRW for their contribution to this work.

Ruett M, Whitney C, Luedeling E (2020) Model-based evaluation of management options in ornamental plant nurseries, Journal of Cleaner Production, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122653