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Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management
The ODD Protocol for Describing Agent-Based and Other Simulation Models: A Second Update to Improve Clarity, Replication, and Structural Realism
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Paper Summary
Conflicts of Interest
Identified Weaknesses
Rating Explanation
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Paper Summary
Paperzilla title
ODD: Level Up Your Model Documentation Game!
The paper presents an update to the ODD (Overview, Design concepts, and Details) protocol, a standard for describing agent-based models (ABMs). This update aims to address limitations of the original protocol, such as lack of guidance, document length, difficulty with complex models, and missing design rationale, to improve clarity, reproducibility, and integration with design methodologies like pattern-oriented modeling.
Possible Conflicts of Interest
None identified
Identified Weaknesses
Limited Guidance Materials
The lack of detailed, open-access guidance materials has made it difficult for some researchers to understand and fully utilize ODD, particularly the "state variables" and "design concepts" elements. This has sometimes resulted in incomplete or inconsistent use of the protocol, hindering standardization.
Length and placement in supplements
The length of ODD documents, especially for complex models, often necessitates their placement in supplementary materials. This limits their visibility and may discourage careful review, which is counter to the goal of transparent model description.
Lack of rationale
ODD does not explicitly cater to the rationale behind model design choices, making it difficult for readers to understand the justification for model structure and for authors to fully document their design process. This limits transparency and the potential for re-use of modeling techniques and theory.
Ambiguity and lack of code linking
The lack of explicit linking between ODD and model code can create ambiguity for readers. While a thorough textual description is aimed at, code-level details may be necessary for full understanding and replication.
Lack of POM integration
ODD's existing structure does not provide a clear way to describe the emergent patterns used in pattern-oriented modeling (POM). This makes it difficult to integrate POM, a valuable tool for model design and evaluation, with the ODD protocol.
Rating Explanation
This paper addresses significant limitations of the widely used ODD protocol for documenting ABMs and provides concrete solutions to improve clarity, replication, and integration with other modeling practices like pattern-oriented modeling. It also proposes expanding the use of ODD beyond ABMs, creating a shared language for simulation modeling. While the update isn't revolutionary, it represents important progress in standardizing and enhancing model documentation and thus improving the reproducibility and transparency of simulation research.
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Original Title:
The ODD Protocol for Describing Agent-Based and Other Simulation Models: A Second Update to Improve Clarity, Replication, and Structural Realism
File Name:
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0.76 MB
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July 14, 2025 at 06:54 AM
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