Procedural Knowledge Libraries: Towards Executable (Research) Memory

TL;DR

Procedural Knowledge Libraries (PKLs) aim to capture the entire scientific process, including hypotheses and failures, to enhance reproducibility and collaboration through executable, version-controlled research records within Jupyter notebooks.

Contribution

This paper introduces a framework for implementing PKLs in Jupyter, enabling comprehensive, executable, and version-controlled documentation of research processes.

Findings

Framework for PKLs in Jupyter proposed

Supports capturing hypotheses, failures, and decisions

Enhances reproducibility and collaboration in research

Abstract

Procedural Knowledge Libraries (PKLs) are frameworks for capturing the full arc of scientific inquiry, not just its outcomes. Whereas traditional libraries store static end products, PKLs preserve the process that leads to those results, including hypotheses, failures, decisions, and iterations. By addressing the loss of tacit knowledge -- typically buried in notebooks, emails, or memory -- PKLs lay a foundation for reproducible, collaborative, and adaptive research. PKLs provide executable, version-controlled records that contextualize each step of a research process. For example, a researcher using Jupyter notebooks could share not just final outputs, but also the reasoning, discarded approaches, and intermediate analyses that informed them. This work proposes a framework for implementing PKLs within the Jupyter ecosystem, supported by a lens-based transformation model and procedural storage schema.