An Agentic Approach Towards Replication Package Quality Evaluation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Mbida, Maximilian Alexander Amougou, Angermeir, Florian
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Mbida, Maximilian Alexander Amougou
Angermeir, Florian
author_facet Mbida, Maximilian Alexander Amougou
Angermeir, Florian
contents Reproducibility in empirical software engineering relies on complete, accessible, and reusable research artifacts, yet artifact evaluation remains largely manual and difficult to scale. This emerging results paper explores an agentic approach for assessing replication package quality by translating open-science guidelines into machine-verifiable criteria. We consolidate 380 requirements from 34 sources into 51 reproducibility criteria, of which 31 are operationalized for automated artifact-based evaluation. Based on these criteria, we implement a multi-agent prototype that automatically inspects replication packages and produces evidence-grounded improvement reports. A preliminary evaluation on five replication packages shows high inter-run consistency of 91.4\% and 75.4\% correctness, through micro-averaged agreement with a manual baseline. The agent performs best on structural criteria such as code, environment, and artifact availability, but struggles with qualitative or mixed-method studies. A pilot survey with seven software engineering researchers indicates well perceived usefulness and adoption potential, while revealing cognitive load in the human-in-the-loop planning step. Overall, these emerging results indicate that agentic research artifact evaluation has the potential to support authors and reviewers by automating selected routine checks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2606_02006
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle An Agentic Approach Towards Replication Package Quality Evaluation
Mbida, Maximilian Alexander Amougou
Angermeir, Florian
Software Engineering
Reproducibility in empirical software engineering relies on complete, accessible, and reusable research artifacts, yet artifact evaluation remains largely manual and difficult to scale. This emerging results paper explores an agentic approach for assessing replication package quality by translating open-science guidelines into machine-verifiable criteria. We consolidate 380 requirements from 34 sources into 51 reproducibility criteria, of which 31 are operationalized for automated artifact-based evaluation. Based on these criteria, we implement a multi-agent prototype that automatically inspects replication packages and produces evidence-grounded improvement reports. A preliminary evaluation on five replication packages shows high inter-run consistency of 91.4\% and 75.4\% correctness, through micro-averaged agreement with a manual baseline. The agent performs best on structural criteria such as code, environment, and artifact availability, but struggles with qualitative or mixed-method studies. A pilot survey with seven software engineering researchers indicates well perceived usefulness and adoption potential, while revealing cognitive load in the human-in-the-loop planning step. Overall, these emerging results indicate that agentic research artifact evaluation has the potential to support authors and reviewers by automating selected routine checks.
title An Agentic Approach Towards Replication Package Quality Evaluation
topic Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.02006