Open data provenance and reproducibility: a case study from publishing CMS open data

Abstract

In this paper we present the latest CMS open data release published on the CERN Oopen Data portal. Samples of collision and simulated datasets were released together with detailed information about the data provenance. The associated data production chains cover the necessary computing environments, the configuration files and the computational procedures used in each data production step. We describe data curation techniques used to obtain and publish the data provenance information and we study the possibility of reproducing parts of the released data using the publicly available information. The present work demonstrates the usefulness of releasing selected samples of raw and primary data in order to fully ensure the completeness of information about the data production chain for the attention of general data scientists and other non-specialists interested in using particle physics data for education or research purposes.