Collaborative Research: Disciplinary Improvements: FAIROS-HEP, a Research Coordination Network for Particle Physics

The FAIROS-HEP research coordination network will foster the adoption of practices and cyberinfrastructure to enable reuse and reinterpretation of high energy physics (HEP) datasets. A key mechanism that the project seeks to cultivate is that of “living publications”, distributed objects where the description of scientific results, the data on which they are based, and the computational procedures used to generate them are all available for examination, reproduction, and reuse.

This and other mechanisms which the RCN would foster would facilitate distributed, asynchronous reuse of HEP research products, by means of a combined infrastructure supporting publications, data, software, analysis and workflow preservation. FAIROS-HEP builds on longstanding collaboration among the stakeholders of the extended HEP community.

In the context of particle physics, a “living publication” will provide: (1) published likelihood functions and statistical models that can be used for combinations and parametric reinterpretation (which could include EFT (effective field theory) analysis once the EFT operators have been specified), (2) analysis workflows compatible with REANA (Reproducible Research Data Analysis), (3) a recast interface to the analysis workflow that would allow for kinematic reinterpretation (which is more general and encompasses all EFT analyses as well as tests of theories that predict new particles directly produced). The preserved analyses in (2) would also streamline the process by which an experiment would like to fork an analysis and implement changes (i.e. diffs) instead of starting from scratch.

This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.