A systematic approach for assessing the importance of visual differences in reproduced maps.

Critical to the foundation of scientific research, the reproducibility of studies and their results is a fundamental element, ensuring the credibility of the findings and fostering trust. Maps play an important role here, as they are used across disciplines to visualize complex insights and outcomes from a wide range of studies. Due to their relevance in this context, it is essential to be able to reproduce maps as well, and consequently, to assess whether a map reproduction was successful. In this paper, we present our research on which aspects affect the success of map reproduction and how to assess map reproduction based on the visual differences between the original and the reproduced map. We collected data from two focus groups and an online survey to gain a deeper understanding of how geoscientists and map experts conceptualize map reproduction, which factors they consider relevant in this process, and how strong their impact is relative to each other. We analyzed this data qualitatively and quantitatively to create a conceptual model that describes the assessment of map reproduction and a set of criteria that influence the success of the reproduction. With these contributions, we aim to provide an initial toolkit for systematically assessing the success of map reproduction attempts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]