ABM DOCUMENTATION AND ODD PROTOCOL IN ECONOMICS: A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

Since the first agent-based models (ABM), the scientific community has been interested in making not only the results of computational models understandable but also the modeling description, to facilitate their replication. The form that has been adopted to a greater extent has been the ODD (Overview, Design concepts, and Details) protocol, which provides a generic structure for its documentation. This protocol provides a way to clearly explain the procedures and interactions of the complex systems to be analyzed, with applications that have spread across different disciplines. This study presents a bibliometric analysis using Scopus database of the articles that emerged from the first publication of this protocol in 2006. The results show that the use of this form of documenting has grown in Economics, but its participation remains stable in relative terms. Results also show that the top journal both in number of articles and impact is JASSS, but it is not observed that there is a greater dissemination toward specific Economics journals or that it is used for a greater number of topics. Finally, it is found that there is a common core in Economics’ ABM literature, with a bias toward methodological articles in the articles that follow the ODD protocol while there is a bias towards articles on economic models in those that do not follow this protocol.