  Simulation has become, in many application areas, a sine-qua-non. Most
recently, COVID-19 has underlined the importance of simulation studies and
limitations in current practices and methods. We identify four goals of
methodological work for addressing these limitations. The first is to provide
better support for capturing, representing, and evaluating the context of
simulation studies, including research questions, assumptions, requirements,
and activities contributing to a simulation study. In addition, the composition
of simulation models and other simulation studies' products must be supported
beyond syntactical coherence, including aspects of semantics and purpose,
enabling their effective reuse. A higher degree of automating simulation
studies will contribute to more systematic, standardized simulation studies and
their efficiency. Finally, it is essential to invest increased effort into
effectively communicating results and the processes involved in simulation
studies to enable their use in research and decision-making. These goals are
not pursued independently of each other, but they will benefit from and
sometimes even rely on advances in other subfields. In the present paper, we
explore the basis and interdependencies evident in current research and
practice and delineate future research directions based on these
considerations.
