Abstract for:Modeling Frameworks for Theory Development, Appraisal and Testing

Over the years, there has been considerable optimism and debate about the role and use of system dynamics for theory development, and in particular, what it means to say one is doing scientific modeling. Sometimes these debates have been continuous split the community over what constitutes a good model, what should be published, and what should be kept hidden from public review and scrutiny. There have been numerous efforts over the years to address this by developing better tools for documenting models (Martinez-Moyano, 2012), reporting guidelines for system dynamics simulation research in social sciences to enhance reproducibility(Rahmandad & Sterman, 2012), and establishing best practices for modeling (e.g., Martinez-Moyano & Richardson, 2013). More recently, standards have been established for exchanging models in XMILE (Eberlein & Chichakly, 2013)and are gradually be adopted and implemented in a variety of software packages. This paper proposes a framework for improving the reproducibilty of system dynamics modeling across platforms using the R programming language and by drawing a distinction between core models and auxiliary models.