Spotlights on BEACON

Looking for Codes via Literature

Have you ever in need of some codes to solve a problem? You suspect some codes already exist, and you may not need to write from scratch.  However, where to find such codes?  One suggestion is to search the scientific literature, looking for papers on your topic, and find out if the authors have shared their codes.  One database from the Library's collection, IEEE Xplore, has a feature that helps in finding codes much easier.  Here is a short description of how The general approach is to search the database by topic or keywords, then narrow down the results by facets.  If you re-use or build on the codes, don't forget to give attribution to where the codes came from and cite it in your paper.  This is the spirit of open science: use, make, and share.

IEEE Xplore: Supplemental Items

1. At the IEEE Xplore homepage, put in the search term, for example, "robotic arms"
2. At the results listing page, look at the facets on the left panel, find and click on the facet called "Supplemental Items"
3. Check "Code", and Click "Apply. 
4. The result list is narrow down to the two papers with codes.  Click on the title to see the full record.
5. Review the left panel for the outline of the paper and accompanying materials, click on "Code & Datasets" 
6. The code is displayed.  Added bonus, it is possible to test run the codes within the IEEE Xplore Code Ocean environment.