The CSDMS Model Repository

The Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS), an international organization of over 1700 members, has a mission to enable model use and development for research in earth surface processes. CSDMS strives to expand the use of quantitative modeling techniques, promotes best practices in coding, and advocates for the use of open-source software.

As a service for its members, the CSDMS Integration Facility (IF) maintains a code repository for numerical models. The CSDMS Model Repository, initialized in 2009, currently holds over 300 open source models and tools. To submit code to the Repository, a community member completes an online form, providing metadata for their code and selecting an open source license. In return for the code contribution, CSDMS provides a home for the model on its publicly accessible site. The model page is initially populated with the metadata provided by the author, but it can be edited and expanded to include documentation, examples, references, and graphics. If the code is available on a public repository, such as GitHub, a link to it is provided from the Repository; otherwise, the code is added to the Repository's GitHub repository. The version of the code submitted to the Repository is assigned a DOI, making it citable. A QR code, suitable for display on a conference poster, is also created. Finally, the CSDMS IF has devised a model h-index, which gives a measure of a model's visibility through journal citations.

By submitting code to the CSDMS Model Repository, a model developer gets visibility, findability, accessibility, storage, and preservation for their model code. CSDMS gets a library of open source models that can be used for research. This can help accelerate science, since it's often easier to use or modify an existing model than it is to start from scratch. The Repository also helps prevent model codes from going "dark" and being forgotten. Above all, the Repository serves the ethos of community modeling promoted by CSDMS.