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Many high-profile scientific journals have established policies mandating the release of code accompanying papers that describe computational methods. Unfortunately, the majority of journals that publish papers in Computational Chemistry and Cheminformatics have yet to define such guidelines. This Viewpoint reviews the current state of reproducibility for the field and makes a case for the inclusion of code with computational papers.

In an unprecedented effort of scientific collaboration, researchers across fields are racing to support the response to COVID-19. Making a global impact with AI tools will require scalable approaches for data, model and code sharing; adapting applications to local contexts; and cooperation across borders.

We propose the construction of a Digital Knowledge Economy Index, quantified by way of measuring content creation and participation through digital platforms, namely the code sharing platform GitHub, the crowdsourced encyclopaedia Wikipedia, and Internet domain registrations and estimating a fifth sub-index for the World Bank Knowledge Economy Index for year 2012. This approach complements conventional data sources such as national statistics and expert surveys and helps reflect the underlying digital content creation, capacities, and skills of the population. An index that combines traditional and novel data sources can provide a more revealing view of the status of the world’s digital knowledge economy and highlight where the (un)availability of digital resources may actually reinforce inequalities in the age of data.

Open source software (OSS) is essential for modern society and, while substantial research has been done on individual (typically central) projects, only a limited understanding of the periphery of the entire OSS ecosystem exists. For example, how are the tens of millions of projects in the periphery interconnected through. technical dependencies, code sharing, or knowledge flow? To answer such questions we: a) create a very large and frequently updated collection of version control data in the entire FLOSS ecosystems named World of Code (WoC), that can completely cross-reference authors, projects, commits, blobs, dependencies, and history of the FLOSS ecosystems and b) provide capabilities to efficiently correct, augment, query, and analyze that data. Our current WoC implementation is capable of being updated on a monthly basis and contains over 18B Git objects. To evaluate its research potential and to create vignettes for its usage, we employ WoC in conducting several research tasks. In particular, we find that it is capable of supporting trend evaluation, ecosystem measurement, and the determination of package usage. We expect WoC to spur investigation into global properties of OSS development leading to increased resiliency of the entire OSS ecosystem. Our infrastructure facilitates the discovery of key technical dependencies, code flow, and social networks that provide the basis to determine the structure and evolution of the relationships that drive FLOSS activities and innovation.

Context: this document is designed to be along with those that are in the first edition of the new section of the Journal of Contemporary Administration (RAC): the tutorial-articles section. Objective: the purpose is to present the new section and discuss relevant topics of tutorial-articles. Method: I divide the document into three main parts. First, I provide a summary of the state of the art in open data and open code at the current date that, jointly, create the context for tutorial-articles. Second, I provide some guidance to the future of the section on tutorial-articles, providing a structure and some insights that can be developed in the future. Third, I offer a short R script to show examples of open data that, I believe, can be used in the future in tutorial-articles, but also in innovative empirical studies. Conclusion: finally, I provide a short description of the first tutorial-articles accepted for publication in this current RAC’s edition. RESUMO Contexto: este documento foi escrito para compor a primeira edição da nova seção da Revista de Administração Contemporânea (RAC): a seção de artigos-tutoriais. Objetivo: o objetivo deste artigo é apresentar a nova seção e discutir tópicos relevantes a um artigo-tutorial. Método: este documento é dividido em três partes principais. Primeiro, oferece-se um resumo das mais importantes práticas de dados abertos e materiais abertos atualmente que, conjuntamente, criam o contexto ideal para artigos-tutoriais. Em seguida, oferecem-se diretrizes para o futuro da seção e algumas ideias que podem ser desenvolvidas no futuro. Em seguida, oferece-se um protocolo de pesquisa em R com exemplos de bases de dados abertas, que, acredita-se, podem ser relevantes para artigos-tutoriais futuros, mas também para estudos empíricos diversos. Conclusão: finalmente, ofereço uma breve descrição dos artigos-tutoriais aceitos na presente seção da RAC.

Data Availability Statement: The linked JANIS-DPC dataset analyzed for this study is not fully available due to patient identifiable data being present. However, JANIS does provide surveillance data in its open report available. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to https://janis.mhlw.go.jp/english/about/index.html. Copyright © 2020 Naylor, Yamashita, Iwami, Kunisawa, Mizuno, Castro-Sánchez, Imanaka, Ahmad and Holmes. Background: More data-driven evidence is needed on the cost of antibiotic resistance. Both Japan and England have large surveillance and administrative datasets. Code sharing of costing models enables reduced duplication of effort in research. Objective: To estimate the burden of antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infections (BSIs) in Japan, utilizing code that was written to estimate the hospital burden of antibiotic-resistant Escherichia coli BSIs in England. Additionally, the process in which the code-sharing and application was performed is detailed, to aid future such use of code-sharing in health economics. Methods: National administrative data sources were linked with voluntary surveillance data within the Japan case study. R software code, which created multistate models to estimate the excess length of stay associated with different exposures of interest, was adapted from previous use and run on this dataset. Unit costs were applied to estimate healthcare system burden in 2017 international dollars (I$). Results: Clear supporting documentation alongside open-access code, licensing, and formal communication channels, helped the re-application of costing code from the English setting within the Japanese setting. From the Japanese healthcare system perspective, it was estimated that there was an excess cost of I$6,392 per S. aureus BSI, whilst oxacillin resistance was associated with an additional I$8,155. Conclusions: S. aureus resistance profiles other than methicillin may substantially impact hospital costs. The sharing of costing models within the field of antibiotic resistance is a feasible way to increase burden evidence efficiently, allowing for decision makers (with appropriate data available) to gain rapid cost-of-illness estimates. HPRU-2012-10047

We are developing an “Online Models” dialogue for NetLogo. It works like NetLogo’s “Models Library” dialogue but shows every NetLogo model publicly available on GitHub instead. Our goal is to encourage the sharing of NetLogo models in a way that brings the advantages of version control systems and open-source style collaboration to the world of agent-based modelling.

Distributed Software Development (DSD) is drawing a lot of attention from the research community due to its increasing significance. However, distance becomes a barrier in communication and coordination in such kind of development. Many tools have been used to help coordination in DSD. One such tool is Software Configuration Management (SCM) which has become an integral part of DSD. Although it coordinates the developers’ effort, it has the limitation of not detecting conflicts at an early stage. Therefore, the Advance Version Control (AVC) tool has been designed and implemented to enhance the functionality of the version control system in a distributed environment. It performs versioning of files as well as detects the conflicts at an early stage and informs the concerned developers about conflicting changes. It provides code sharing to mutually resolve the inconsistencies. It also provides a communication medium because, sometimes, communication between conflicting developers can also solve the ...

Numerous studies have demonstrated low but increasing rates of data and code sharing within medical and health research disciplines. However, it remains unclear how commonly data and code are shared across all fields of medical and health research, as well as whether sharing rates are positively associated with implementation of progressive policies by publishers and funders, or growing expectations from the medical and health research community at large. Therefore this systematic review aims to synthesise the findings of medical and health science studies that have empirically investigated the prevalence of data or code sharing, or both. Objectives include the investigation of: (i) the prevalence of public sharing of research data and code alongside published articles (including preprints), (ii) the prevalence of private sharing of research data and code in response to reasonable requests, and (iii) factors associated with the sharing of either research output (e.g., the year published, the publisher’s policy on sharing, the presence of a data or code availability statement). It is hoped that the results will provide some insight into how often research data and code are shared publicly and privately, how this has changed over time, and how effective some measures such as the institution of data sharing policies and data availability statements have been in motivating researchers to share their underlying data and code.

The Code Genie programming environment was built by the researcher and the author of this paper as part of a Ph.D. study to encourage high school student for coding in JavaScript language. This environment was tested and used in three coding workshops. The participated students had several suggestions in their feedback comments. One of the common suggestions was adding a tutorial section to the environment. Gamification elements and the suggested tutorial section were added to the Code Genie web Integrated Development Environment (IDE). This update is introduced and discussed in this paper.

Building well-documented, citable frameworks for Earth data analysis will encourage scientific replicability by addressing the underlying issues that inhibit code sharing.

There have been numerous calls to promote reproducible research. This growing awareness coincides with major advances in data/code sharing technologies. Yet authors, journals, institutions, and fun...

The traditional scientific paper falls short of effectively communicating computational research. To help improve this situation, we propose a system by which the computational workflows underlying research articles are checked. The CODECHECK system uses open infrastructure and tools and can be integrated into review and publication processes in multiple ways. We describe these integrations along multiple dimensions (importance, who, openness, when). In collaboration with academic publishers and conferences, we demonstrate CODECHECK with 25 reproductions of diverse scientific publications. These CODECHECKs show that asking for reproducible workflows during a collaborative review can effectively improve executability. While CODECHECK has clear limitations, it may represent a building block in Open Science and publishing ecosystems for improving the reproducibility, appreciation, and, potentially, the quality of non-textual research artefacts. The CODECHECK website can be accessed here: https://codecheck.org.uk/.

An evergreen scientific feature is the ability for scientific works to be reproduced. Since chaotic systems are so hard to understand analytically, numerical simulations assume a key role in their investigation. Such simulations have been considered as reproducible in many works. However, few studies have focused on the effects of the finite precision of computers on the simulation reproducibility of chaotic systems, moreover, code sharing and details on how to reproduce simulation results are not present in many investigations. In this work, a case study of reproducibility is presented in the simulation of a chaotic jerk circuit, using the software LTspice. We also employ the OSF platform to share the project associated with this paper. Tests performed with LTspice XVII on four different computers show the difficulties of simulation reproducibility by this software. We compare these results with experimental data using a normalised root mean square error in order to identify the computer with the highest prediction horizon. We also calculate the entropy of the signals to check differences among computer simulations and the practical experiment. The methodology developed is efficient in identifying the computer with better performance, which allows applying it to other cases in the literature. This investigation is fully described and available on the OSF platform.

In scientific applications, physical quantities and units of measurement are used regularly. If the inherent incompatibility between these units is not handled properly it can lead to major, sometimes catastrophic, problems. Although the risk of a miscalculation is high and the cost equally so, almost none of the major programming languages has support for physical quantities. Instead, scientific code developers often make their own tools or rely on external libraries to help them spot or prevent these mistakes. We employed a systematic approach to examine and analyse all available physical quantity open-source libraries. Approximately 3700 search results across seven repository hosting sites were condensed into a list of 82 of the most comprehensive and well-developed libraries currently available. In this group, 30 different programming languages are represented. Out of these 82 libraries, 38 have been updated within the last two years. These 38 are summarised in this paper as they are deemed the most relevant. The conclusion we draw from these results is that there is clearly too much diversity, duplicated efforts, and a lack of code sharing and harmonisation which discourages use and adoption.

In this work-in-progress report, we outline the first results from our study of collaboration networks in a two-year Data Science minor for non-STEM students at the Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg, Russia.

This paper discusses the results of an experimental study that was conducted to explore the effect of integrating art and animation in teaching computer programming on high school students' interest and knowledge in programming. The study aimed to explore the students' interest in pursuing a degree in Computer Science (CS) after graduation. Three groups of high school students were targeted with educational programming sessions, and the study variables were measured through pre and posttest surveys. A new web-based programming tool was developed and used as the treatment in this study. The developed tool includes the use of art, animation and code sharing to increase students' motivation in learning computer programming. The results of the study showed that the use of art, animation and code sharing increased students' knowledge, enjoyment, and motivation in learning computer programming, and hence, increased their interest in pursuing a degree in CS after graduation.

The reproduction and replication of research results has become a major issue for a number of scientific disciplines. In computer science and related computational disciplines such as systems biology, the challenges closely revolve around the ability to implement (and exploit) novel algorithms and models. Taking a new approach from the literature and applying it to a new codebase frequently requires local knowledge missing from the published manuscripts and transient project websites. Alongside this issue, benchmarking, and the lack of open, transparent and fair benchmark sets present another barrier to the verification and validation of claimed results. In this paper, we outline several recommendations to address these issues, driven by specific examples from a range of scientific domains. Based on these recommendations, we propose a high-level prototype open automated platform for scientific software development which effectively abstracts specific dependencies from the individual researcher and their workstation, allowing easy sharing and reproduction of results. This new e-infrastructure for reproducible computational science offers the potential to incentivise a culture change and drive the adoption of new techniques to improve the quality and efficiency -- and thus reproducibility -- of scientific exploration., Comment: Invited submission to Journal of Open Research Software; 12 pages, LaTeX

Software developers rely on support from a variety of resources---including other developers---but the coordination cost of finding another developer with relevant experience, explaining the context of the problem, composing a specific help request, and providing access to relevant code is prohibitively high for all but the largest of tasks. Existing technologies for synchronous communication (e.g. voice chat) have high scheduling costs, and asynchronous communication tools (e.g. forums) require developers to carefully describe their code context to yield useful responses. This paper introduces Codeon, a system that enables more effective task hand-off between end-user developers and remote helpers by allowing asynchronous responses to on-demand requests. With Codeon, developers can request help by speaking their requests aloud within the context of their IDE. Codeon automatically captures the relevant code context and allows remote helpers to respond with high-level descriptions, code annotations, code snippets, and natural language explanations. Developers can then immediately view and integrate these responses into their code. In this paper, we describe Codeon, the studies that guided its design, and our evaluation that its effectiveness as a support tool. In our evaluation, developers using Codeon completed nearly twice as many tasks as those who used state-of-the-art synchronous video and code sharing tools, by reducing the coordination costs of seeking assistance from other developers.

A method of hardware reduction is proposed for logic circuits of Moore FSMs implemented with CPLDs. The method is based on the idea of code sharing. The main difference from already known methods is that the counter increases its content during conditional and unconditional transitions. An example of application of proposed method is given.

In the previous chapters, I talked about what Xamarin.Forms is and where it fits within the existing Xamarin technology. Xamarin.Forms was never intended to replace the Xamarin technology as a whole. Forms is merely offering another alternative to maximize code sharing by making it possible to define the UI in a unified way.

The use of standard platforms in the field of humanoid robotics can lower the entry barrier for new research groups, and accelerate research by the facilitation of code sharing. Numerous humanoid standard platforms exist in the lower size ranges of up to 60 cm, but beyond that humanoid robots scale up quickly in weight and price, becoming less affordable and more difficult to operate, maintain and modify. The \(\mathrm{igus}^{{\circledR }}\) Humanoid Open Platform is an affordable, fully open-source platform for humanoid research. At 92 cm, the robot is capable of acting in an environment meant for humans, and is equipped with enough sensors, actuators and computing power to support researchers in many fields. The structure of the robot is entirely 3D printed, leading to a lightweight and visually appealing design. This paper covers the mechanical and electrical aspects of the robot, as well as the main features of the corresponding open-source ROS software. At RoboCup 2016, the platform was awarded the first International HARTING Open Source Prize.

A method for reducing hardware expenses in compositional microprogram control unit and CPLD chips is proposed. This method is based on the use of pseudoequivalent operational linear chains, wide fan-in of PAL macrocells, and existence of free outputs of embedded memory block in CPLD chips. An example of applying the method is given. It is shown that the method reduces hardware expenses to 30%.

This article proposes two modifications of the microcommand addressing system in a compositional microprogram control unit with code sharing. The modifications are based on using FSM pseudoequivalent states to reduce the number of rows in the FSM transition table and thereby to reduce the complexity of the combinational part of the device. Methods are proposed for synthesizing compositional control units with a modified microcommand addressing system. The research results are presented and appropriate fields of application of the methods proposed are considered.

This paper presents a new multiagent middleware named Siebog, built by combining the features of HTML5 and Enterprise Edition of Java. It provides an infrastructural support for both client-side and server-side agents. The client-side agents can be executed on a wide variety of software and hardware platforms, including desktops, smartphones and tablets, and Smart TVs. The server-side agents, on the other hand, can harness the benefits of clustered environments, and rely on automated load-balancing and fault-tolerance for the uninterrupted delivery of services. The two sides of Siebog have been integrated in a way that enables cross-platform messaging, agent code sharing, and even heterogeneous agent mobility. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.itc.45.2.12621

Summary Phylogenetic comparative methods are becoming increasingly popular for investigating evolutionary patterns and processes. However, these methods are not infallible – they suffer from biases and make assumptions like all other statistical methods.Unfortunately, although these limitations are generally well known in the phylogenetic comparative methods community, they are often inadequately assessed in empirical studies leading to misinterpreted results and poor model fits. Here, we explore reasons for the communication gap dividing those developing new methods and those using them.We suggest that some important pieces of information are missing from the literature and that others are difficult to extract from long, technical papers. We also highlight problems with users jumping straight into software implementations of methods (e.g. in r) that may lack documentation on biases and assumptions that are mentioned in the original papers.To help solve these problems, we make a number of suggestions including providing blog posts or videos to explain new methods in less technical terms, encouraging reproducibility and code sharing, making wiki‐style pages summarising the literature on popular methods, more careful consideration and testing of whether a method is appropriate for a given question/data set, increased collaboration, and a shift from publishing purely novel methods to publishing improvements to existing methods and ways of detecting biases or testing model fit. Many of these points are applicable across methods in ecology and evolution, not just phylogenetic comparative methods.

In computational sciences such as image processing, publishing usually isn't enough to allow other researchers to verify results. Often, supplementary materials such as source code and measurement data are required. Yet most researchers choose not to make their code available because of the extra time required to prepare it. Are such efforts actually worthwhile, though? © 2012 IEEE. ispartof: Computing in Science and Engineering vol:14 issue:4 pages:42-47 status: published

Reduction in the number of LUT elements for control units with code sharingTwo methods are proposed targeted at reduction in the number of look-up table elements in logic circuits of compositional microprogram control units (CMCUs) with code sharing. The methods assume the application of field-programmable gate arrays for the implementation of the combinational part of the CMCU, whereas embedded-memory blocks are used for implementation of its control memory. Both methods are based on the existence of classes of pseudoequivalent operational linear chains in a microprogram to be implemented. Conditions for the application of the proposed methods and examples of design are shown. Results of conducted experiments are given.

Research and development efforts have recently started to compare malware variants, as it is believed that malware authors are reusing code. A number of these projects have focused on identifying functions through the use of signature-based classifiers. We introduce three new classifiers that characterize a function’s use of global data. Experiments on malware show that we can meaningfully correlate functions on the basis of their global data references even when their functions share little code. We also present an algorithm that combines existing classifiers and our new ones into an ensemble for correlating functions in two binary programs. For testing, we developed a model for comparing our work to previous signature based classifiers. We then used that model to show how our new combined ensemble classifier dominates the previously reported classifiers. The resulting ensemble can be used by malware analysts when they are comparing two binaries. This technique will allow them to correlate both functions and global data references between the two and will lead to a quick identification of any sharing that is occurring.

The broad range of capabilities exhibited by humans and animals is achieved through a large set of heterogeneous, tightly integrated cognitive mechanisms. To move artificial systems closer to such general-purpose intelligence we cannot avoid replicating some subset--quite possibly a substantial portion--of this large set. Progress in this direction requires that systems integration be taken more seriously as a fundamental research problem. In this paper I make the argument that intelligence must be studied holistically. I present key issues that must be addressed in the area of integration and propose solutions for speeding up rate of progress towards more powerful, integrated A.I. systems, including (a) tools for building large, complex architectures, (b) a design methodology for building realtime A.I. systems and (c) methods for facilitating code sharing at the community level.

A method of hardware reduction is proposed for logic circuits of Moore FSMs implemented with FPGAs. The method is based on the idea of code sharing. The main difference from already known methods is that the counter increases its content during conditional and unconditional transitions. An example of application of proposed method is given.

The method of design of compositional microprogram control unit with code sharing is proposed. The proposed method is based on application of special address transformer to form an address of microinstruction on the base of its representation as pair . Such approach permits to use all positive features of code sharing independently on characteristics of interpreted flowchart of algorithm, the optimal encoding of pseudoequivalent operational linear chains in particular. The proposed method permits to decrease the size of control memory in comparison with all known methods of such control units design. An example of proposed method application is given.

Sharing code is becoming increasingly important in the wake of Open Science. In this review I describe and compare two popular code-sharing utilities, GitHub and Open Science Framework (OSF). GitHub is a mature, industry-standard tool but lacks focus towards researchers. In comparison, OSF offers a one-stop solution for researchers but a lot of functionality is still under development. I conclude by listing alternative lesser-known tools for code and materials sharing.

The goal of this article is to coalesce a discussion around best practices for scholarly research that utilizes computational methods, by providing a formalized set of best practice recommendations to guide computational scientists and other stakeholders wishing to disseminate reproducible research, facilitate innovation by enabling data and code re-use, and enable broader communication of the output of computational scientific research. Scholarly dissemination and communication standards are changing to reflect the increasingly computational nature of scholarly research, primarily to include the sharing of the data and code associated with published results. We also present these Best Practices as a living, evolving, and changing document at http://wiki.stodden.net/Best_Practices.

A new trend for applications for the Internet is to create and share tiny codes for applications like site-specific codes for a broswer extension. It needs a new tools to share and distribute such codes efficiently. We built a Wiki site called Wedata which stores tiny code for a particular service. Wedata has three features: machine readability, code sharing, and service orientation. Many developers already use Wedata for browser extensions. More than 1,300,000 users are using Wedata. As described in this paper, we describe the Wedata system, usage statistics, and the behavior of open collaboration on the system.

International audience; Low-end embedded systems are still programmed in C and assembly, and adopting high-level languages such as C# should reduce the length of their development cycles. For these systems, code size is a major concern, but run-time efficiency should also be reasonable -- programmers will not migrate to C# unless the overhead compared with C is insignificant. In this paper, we propose a static approach based on whole program optimization for implementing .NET generics in such systems. Indeed, the implementation of run- time generics involves a tradeoff between size and run-time efficiency. In this proposal, generic instances are detected through a generalization of RTA to parametric polymorphism. Also, we propose an implementation scheme which employs code sharing and more effective coercions than boxing. Unlike existing implementation schemes, it is scalable in the number of generic instances without involving boxing and unboxing in a systematic way.

We believe computational science as practiced today suffers from a growing credibility gap — it is impossible to replicate most of the computational results presented at conferences or published in papers today. We argue that this crisis can be addressed by the open availability of the code and data that generated the results, in other words practicing reproducible computational science. In this paper we present a new computational infrastructure called RunMyCode.org that is designed to support published articles by providing a dissemination platform for the code and data that generated the their results. Published articles are given a companion webpage on the RunMyCode.org website from which a visitor can both download the associated code and data, and execute the code in the cloud directly through the RunMyCode.org website. This permits results to be verified through the companion webpage or on a user's local system. RunMyCode.org also permits a user to upload their own data to the companion webpage to check the code by running it on novel datasets. Through the creation of “coder pages” for each contributor to RunMyCode.org, we seek to facilitate social network-like interaction. Descriptive information appears on each coder page, including demographic data and other companion pages to which they made contributions. In this paper we motivate the rationale and functionality of RunMyCode.org and outline a vision of its future.

The adoption of distributed version control (DVC ), such as Git and Mercurial, in open-source software (OSS) projects has been explosive. Why is this and how are projects using DVC? This new generation of version control supports two important new features: distributed repositories and histories that preserve branches and merges. Through interviews with lead developers in OSS projects and a quantitative analysis of mined data from the histories of sixty project, we find that the vast majority of the projects now using DVC continue to use a centralized model of code sharing, while using branching much more extensively than before their transition to DVC. We then examine the Linux history in depth in an effort to understand and evaluate how branches are used and what benefits they provide. We find that they enable natural collaborative processes: DVC branching allows developers to collaborate on tasks in highly cohesive branches, while enjoying reduced interference from developers working on other tasks, even if those tasks are strongly coupled to theirs.

The method of hardware reduction is proposed which is oriented on compositional microprogram control units with code sharing and PAL-based CPLD chips. The method is based on a wide fan-in of PAL macrocells allowing using more than one source for codes of operational linear chains. An example of the proposed method application is given.

The chapter considers some optimization methods used to reduce the size of CMCU control memory keeping the microprogram. These methods are based on the use of special address transformer permitting to keep the control memory size, which is the same as in case of the CMCU basic structure. One of the methods is oriented towards keeping only the original sets of microoperations and some additional variables in the control memory, in order to provide natural addressing and operation termination operating modes. The second approach assumes that a special CMCU block, which is not the part of its control memory, generates additional variables mentioned above. The methods proposed here permit to reduce control memory volume in comparison with the CMCU basic structure. Negative feature of this approach is decreasing of the CMCU performance because duration of the cycle becomes greater than in case of the CMCU basic structure.

Nowadays, more and more airlines have adopted various al- liance strategies, such as code sharing, equity sharing, merging and acquisition to survive in the rigorously competitive market. To assess the effectiveness of code sharing and merging prac- tices among airlines, we include major factors affecting the decisions of code sharing and merging into our model and propose the formulation and calibration procedures of payoff functions under various airline coalition scenarios. In the case study, we apply TOPSIS to assess the importance of factors in the decision making of code sharing and merging and to create a priority ranking of target airlines in the cooperative games. In conclusion, we found that financial stability and profitability are the top two factors affecting merging decision while prof- itability is the only concern in the code sharing games. In addition, we found that Taiwan's domestic airlines would gain more profits through merging rather than code sharing while EVA and CAL could be the best target for merging.