The narrow technical sense of reproducibility: obtaining the same numerical outputs from the same data and code, on a comparable computational environment.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A Snakemake pipeline producing identical FASTQ-to-VCF outputs across runs on the same container image.
Is an instance
An R Markdown notebook re-knitting to bit-identical figures after a `renv::restore()`.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
Replication of a wet-lab assay (not computational).
Not an instance
A new field study (different scope of reproducibility).

Editorial commentary

Computational reproducibility is a necessary condition for higher-order reproducibility claims. It can fail for mundane reasons (missing data file, undocumented random seed, OS-dependent floating-point, removed library version) and is the principal target of containerisation, workflow languages, and computational-environment capture.

References

Stodden, Seiler, Ma, 'An empirical analysis of journal policy effectiveness for computational reproducibility' (PNAS, 2018).

Also known as

execution reproducibility · bitwise/numeric reproducibility

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Computational reproducibility"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/computational-reproducibility" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/computational-reproducibility",
  "name": "Computational reproducibility",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/computational-reproducibility",
  "description": "The narrow technical sense of reproducibility: obtaining the same numerical outputs from the same data and code, on a comparable computational environment.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/reproducibility#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/computational-reproducibility",
  "sameAs": [
    "execution reproducibility",
    "bitwise/numeric reproducibility"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:22:49",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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