P — Portable

A research object that is self-contained, tracked, and modular may still fail to reproduce if it depends on undocumented host environment state – hardcoded paths, implicitly available tools, or specific OS configurations. Portability requires that procedures can be executed on different hosts, given documented system requirements.

Computational environments must be explicitly defined (not implicitly assumed), machine-reproducible, and version controlled alongside code and data. Whether via containers (Docker, Singularity/Apptainer) or declarative package managers (Nix, Guix), what matters is that environments are specified, versioned, and available within the project.

See the STAMPED paper for the full treatment.

From Script to STAMPED Research Object

20 February 2026·9 mins

Reproducibility Rigor Transparency Reusable Accessible Pattern S — Self-contained T — Tracked A — Actionable M — Modular P — Portable E — Ephemeral D — Distributable Shell Posix Awk Make Git Singularity Containers

Four scenarios showing how to incrementally add STAMPED properties to a shell-based analysis using git, make, and singularity.

Ephemeral Shell Scripts for Reproducing Issues

19 February 2026·6 mins

Reproducibility Rigor Transparency Reusable Accessible Pattern S — Self-contained A — Actionable E — Ephemeral P — Portable Shell Posix Reproducer Bug-Report Testing

Distills a common practice among open-source developers: writing throwaway shell scripts that set up a fresh environment, reproduce a problem, and can be shared as actionable bug reports or starting points for test cases.