ReproSci: a platform designed to support reproducibility studies

ReproSci is a Ruby on Rails web application designed for Bruno Lemaitre’s team to summarize and analyze more than 400 publications in the field of Drosophila melanogaster immunity. Its goal is to organize the knowledge derived from these studies into main, major, and minor claims, and to document the evidence supporting each claim. Each claim can be assessed and labeled with a reproducibility level, ranging from verified to challenged. For each claim, members of the community can contribute through comments and attach supporting documents, thereby participating in the evaluation and definition of the claim’s assessment status.

Thanks to the comprehensive information stored in its relational database, ReproSci enables the generation of statistics necessary to analyze the reproducibility of findings in this research field. The results of this analysis were presented in two publications (1,2) and discussed by specialists in scientific reproducibility in two additional articles (3,4). The platform is generic and can be used by other research groups willing to perform the same type of literature reviewing in any scientific domain.