Study
We are defining the term "study" to refer to a well-defined set of calculations.
The term may be useful way to refer to a set of calculations and results.
We have calculations and simulation experiments. Calculations are initially informal, developing and testing. At some point, a production calculation of some sort will be done for research purposes.
When conducting a more formal calculation, we define the processing in enough detail that we can calculate the total number of jobs run, and data produced. We have defined a "Study" when we have specified sufficient information about our proposed research calculations that we can calculate the size and number of each data product produced. A study implies a specific set of data products.
We propose to use the term study as a organizational container for a set of calculations. There should be study metadata describing the authors, codes used, workflows used, data files used and a list of expected data products.
In most data managements, use concepts of elements, containers, and containers of containers. In computer software and data project, multiple terms are used for these basic concepts like workspace, project, experiment, and study, and study seems appropriate for our research domain.
As an example of a recent study is the CyberShake 1.4 study, calculating probabilistic seismic hazard curves.
