Reproducibility of MonolixSuite results
Consistent reload of MonolixSuite projects and results
MonolixSuite applications ensure full reproducibility and consistency of analysis results. Here is how it works:
MonolixSuite applications save in each project all the elements necessary to run the analysis and replicate results from submitted analyses. In practice, the path to the dataset file, the path to the model file (if custom model not from library), and all settings chosen in the Monolix GUI (tagging of the data set columns, initial parameter values, statistical model definition, task settings, seed of the random number generator, etc) are saved in the .mlxtran file. When an existing Monolix project is loaded and re-run, the results will be exactly the same as for the first run.
In addition, the results of the analysis are loaded in the interface from the results folder as valid results only if nothing has changed in the project since the time of the run. In practice, when launching a run, the content of the mlxtran file is saved in the result folder. When a Monolix project is reloaded, the content of the loaded mlxtran file and the information in the result folder is compared. If they are the same, it means that the results present in the result folder are consistent with the loaded mlxtran and that therefore they are valid. If anything that could affect the results has changed (e.g initial values indicated in the loaded mlxtran file are different from the initial values used to generate the results), the results are not loaded and the warning message “Results have not been loaded due to an old inconsistent project” appears.
Starting with the 2021R1 version, in Monolix and PKanalix a fingerprint of the dataset is also generated and checked when the project is loaded to ensure that not only the path to the data set file but also the content of the dataset has not been modified.
Plot settings are saved in a different file (not the .mlxtran file) and do not impact the reloading of the results.
Rerunning a project with the same MonolixSuite version and the same OS (because random number generators are different in Windows, Linux and Mac) yields the exact same results if nothing has changed in the project. The software version used to generate the results is displayed in the file summary.txt in the results folder.
History of runs
In addition, in Monolix and PKanalix there is a timestamping option in the Preferences of the software called “Save History”. When it is enabled, the project and its results is saved in the results folder after each run, in a subfolder named “History”, thus making sure that previous runs are not lost even if they have been overwritten by a new run.
Below is an example of “History” subfolder in which 3 runs have been saved. Each subfolder named with the time of the run contains the project and its results as they were at the time of the run.
