Tectonophysics Perspectives on Integrated, Coordinated, Open, Networked (ICON) Science

Abstract

This article is composed of two independent opinion pieces about the state of integrated, coordinated, open, and networked (ICON) principles (Goldman et al., 2021, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021EO153180; Goldman et al., 2022, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021ea002099) in Tectonophysics and discussion on the opportunities and challenges of adopting them. Each opinion piece focuses on a different topic: (a) global collaboration, technology transfer and application, reproducibility, and data sharing and infrastructure; and (b) field, experimental, remote sensing, and real-time data research and application. Within tectonophysics science, ICON-FAIR principles are starting to be adopted and implemented, however they have not become frequent and there are still plenty of opportunities for further development. During the last decade, standardization reduced fragmentation, facilitated openly available databases, and enabled different modeling methods to be combined. On the other hand, integration and coordination remained insufficient as exemplified by numerous geophysical interpretation programs running on different platforms, lacking the proper documentation and with diverse output formats. We agree that adapting the principles of ICON-FAIR brings high efforts and risks, but in the end, it has great benefits and potential in the tectonophysics community.