A Practical Guide for Transparency in Psychological Science

Abstract

The credibility of scientific claims depends upon the transparency of the research products upon which they are based (e.g., study protocols, data, materials, and analysis scripts). As psychology navigates a period of unprecedented introspection, user-friendly tools and services that support open science have flourished. However, the plethora of decisions and choices involved can be bewildering. Here we provide a practical guide to help researchers navigate the process of preparing and sharing the products of their research (e.g., choosing a repository, preparing their research products for sharing, structuring folders, etc.). Being an open scientist means adopting a few straightforward research management practices, which lead to less error prone, reproducible research workflows. Further, this adoption can be piecemealeach incremental step towards complete transparency adds positive value. Transparent research practices not only improve the efficiency of individual researchers, they enhance the credibility of the knowledge generated by the scientific community.

Data availability, reusability, and analytic reproducibility: evaluating the impact of a mandatory open data policy at the journal Cognition

“…Neither original authors nor scientists interested in reusing data want to spend their time engaging in extensive back-and-forth exchanges just to establish the analytic reproducibility of published findings. It is therefore in everyone's best interests to ensure that reproducible workflows are adopted during the original study whenever possible [5,36,51]. …”

Advancing Transparency and Openness in Child Development Research: Opportunities

“…Transparently sharing the products of research-beyond writing up findings-can also accelerate progress. Sharing and archiving research protocols and products, from experimental materials to analytic code and video documentation of procedures, allow a greater portion of research efforts to be reused in new investigations Klein et al, 2018). Such reuse enables new progress that is truly cumulative.…”

“…Planning for sharing in advance-determining what data will be shared and how, and where and in what form they will be shared-can help reduce the costs to investigators, or at least spread costs across a study (Klein et al, 2018). New platforms have reduced the costs of sharing data, code, and materials.…”

Publishing Open, Reproducible Research With Undergraduates

“…Not only does transparency benefit the research community at large by facilitating re-use of stimuli, independent examination of results, the potential for re-analysis or meta-analysis, and examples of how to conduct statistical analyses (see Klein et al, 2018), but this practice can also benefit the researchers themselves. In one recent paper of ours, a reviewer recommend a change to how we presented data in a figure.…”

“…Guides on implementing open science practices: Hardwicke (2016), Crüwell et al (2018), and Klein et al (2018). …”