Code Sharing In Prediction Model Research: A Scoping Review
Organizations: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute · University of Calabria · Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine · KU Leuven · Seoul National University Hospital · Seoul National University College of Medicine · Massachusetts Institute of Technology · Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health · UMC Utrecht · University of Birmingham · University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust · Harvard Medical School
Abstract
Analytical code is essential for reproducing diagnostic and prognostic prediction model research, yet code availability in the published literature remains limited. While the TRIPOD statements set standards for reporting prediction model methods, they do not define explicit standards for repository structure and documentation. This review quantifies current code-sharing practices to inform the development of TRIPOD-Code, a TRIPOD extension reporting guideline focused on code sharing. We conducted a scoping review of PubMed-indexed articles citing TRIPOD or TRIPOD+AI as of Aug 11, 2025, restricted to studies retrievable via the PubMed Central Open Access API. Eligible studies developed, updated, or validated multivariable prediction models. A large language model-assisted pipeline was developed to screen articles and extract code availability statements and repository links. Repositories were assessed with the same LLM against 14 predefined reproducibility-related features. Our code is made publicly available. Among 3,967 eligible articles, 12.2% included code sharing statements. Code sharing increased over time, reaching 15.8% in 2025, and was higher among TRIPOD+AI-citing studies than TRIPOD-citing studies. Sharing prevalence varied widely by journal and country. Repository assessment showed substantial heterogeneity in reproducibility features: most repositories contained a README file (80.5%), but fewer specified dependencies (37.6%; version-constrained 21.6%) or were modular (42.4%). In prediction model research, code sharing remains relatively uncommon, and when shared, often falls short of being reusable. These findings provide an empirical baseline for the TRIPOD-Code extension and underscore the need for clearer expectations beyond code availability, including documentation, dependency specification, licensing, and executable structure.
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Appendix
| Precision | Recall | F1 Score | Support | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Out of scope | 0.93 | 0.94 | 0.93 | 105 |
| In scope | 0.98 | 0.98 | 0.98 | 395 |
| Weighted average | 0.97 | 0.97 | 0.97 |
| Precision | Recall | F1 Score | Support | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contains README | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 29 |
| README purpose and outputs | 0.70 | 1.00 | 0.82 | 24 |
| Contains Requirements | 0.62 | 1.00 | 0.76 | 29 |
| Requirements dependency versions | 1.00 | 0.86 | 0.92 | 8 |
| Contains license | 1.00 | 1.00 | 1.00 | 29 |
| Sufficient Code Documentation | 0.71 | 0.71 | 0.71 | 29 |
| Code Sharing Sentence | Number Of Occurrences |
|---|---|
| The complete code used for model development and evaluation in this project is publicly available on GitHub: | 8 |
| The source code for preprocessing and analyzing the data is available on GitHub | 3 |
| The code to build and train the model is openly available on github. | 2 |
| The code used to conduct the analysis is available on GitHub | 2 |
| The implementation of the deep learning framework is available at: | 2 |
| Code is available at | 2 |