An opinionated list of resources to help modelers follow good modeling practices. Developed by the Early Career Scholars Working Group of the Open Modeling Foundation.
Contributions are welcomed! Please read our Contribution Guidelines before submitting your Pull Request.
- Modeling Principles
- Modeling Standards
- Model Libraries
- Societies Discussing Modeling Practices
- Journals Discussing Modeling Practices
- Guides
- Papers
- FAIR - Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable.
- CARE - Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics. Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.
- INSPIRE - Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe.
- ODD - The Overview, Design concepts, and Details protocol standardize descriptions of individual-based and agent-based models.
- TRACE - The TRAnsparent and Comprehensive model Evaludation protocol provide standardized approach to documenting a model's formulation, implementation, testing, and application.
- CSDMS Standard Names - Comprehensive set of rules, patterns and standards for naming variables in models.
- UML - The Unified Modeling Language is a standardized visual modeling language to visualize the architecture and design of a system.
- STEP - The Standard for the Exchange of Product model data or ISO 10303 is a standard to provide interoperability between software.
- OMF Standard - Open Modeling Foundation (in development) modeling standards.
- CoMSES Model Library - Open repository containing models. Developed by CoMSES Net and based on the United States
- OSF - Open repository containing models, research papers, data sets, software and more. Developed by the Center for Open Science and based on the United States.
- Zenodo - Open repository containing models, research papers, data sets, software and more. Developed by CERN and based on Europe.
- OMF - The Open Modeling Foundation is an alliance of modeling organizations to develop and promote a community developed body of modeling standards and best practices.
- CSDMS - The Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System promotes the modeling of earth surface processes by developing, supporting, and disseminating integrated software modules.
- CoMSES Net - The Network for Computational Modeling in the Social and Ecological Sciences is an open community to improving the way we develop, share, and use computational models.
- Environmental Modelling and Software (EMS)
- Ecological Modelling
- Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS)
- Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling (SESMO)
- PLOS Computational Biology
- Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing - Carpentries's tutorial on good scientific computing practices for researchers.
- Jakeman et al., 2024. Towards normalizing good practice across the whole modeling cycle: its instrumentation and future research topics - Outlines research gaps and concrete actions to embed good modeling practice across the entire modeling cycle.
- Elsawah et al., 2017. An overview of the system dynamics process for integrated modelling of socio-ecological systems: Lessons on good modelling practice from five case studies - Shares lessons from five system-dynamics cases to guide good practice in integrated socio-ecological modeling.
- Micheletti et al., 2024. Beyond guides, protocols and acronyms: Adoption of good modelling practices depends on challenging academia's status quo in ecology - Identifies academic barriers to good modeling practice and proposed changes to promote broader adoption of reproducible modeling.
- Hamilton et al., 2022. Fit-for-purpose environmental modeling: Targeting the intersection of usability, reliability and feasibility - Proposes a fit-for-purpose framework to ensure models are useful, reliable, and feasible for decision support.
- Kherroubi Garcia et al., 2025. Ten simple rules for good model-sharing practices - Presents ten practical rules to help researchers share computational models effectively and promote wider adoption of better model-sharing practices.
- Swannack et al., 2025. Cracking the code: Linking good modeling and coding practices for new ecological modelers - Offers guidance for new modelers building strong coding and documentation habits to support reproducible ecological models.