Make like a glass frog: In support of increased transparency in herpetology

Abstract

Across many scientific disciplines, direct replication efforts and meta-analyses have fuelled concerns on the replicability of findings. Ecology and evolution are similarly affected. Investigations into the causes of this lack of replicability have implicated a suite of research practices linked to incentives in the current publishing system. Other fields have taken great strides to counter incentives that can reward obfuscation –chiefly by championing transparency. But how prominent are protransparency (open science) policies in herpetology journals? We use the recently developed Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Factor to assess the transparency promotion of 19 herpetology journals, and compare the TOP scores to broader science. We find promotion of transparent practices currently lacking in many herpetological journals; and encourage authors, students, editors, and publishers to redouble efforts to bring open science practices to herpetology by changing journal policy, peer-review, and personal practice. We promote an array of options –developed and tested in other fields– demonstrated to counter publication bias, boost research uptake, and enable more transparent science, to enrich herpetological research.

Deadly dormmate: A case study on Bungarus candidus living among a student dormitory with implications for human safety

“…We deposited all data in online repositories to facilitate open and transparent analysis following recommendations from Marshall and Strine (2021) regarding openness and transparency in herpetology.…”

A plea for preregistration in taxonomy

“…This should not be taken to imply that preregistration is more important as a solution for these problems than other aspects of the open science movement. For the sake of clarity, we have only focused on preregistration here, but it goes without saying that practices such as open access publishing, sharing of data and other materials, complete reporting, and replication studies are important too (Marshall & Strine 2021).…”

Evaluating Research Transparency and Openness in Communication Sciences and Disorders Journals

“…In closing, we note that as science in general is grappling with a replication crisis and correspondingly, as open science practices are gaining more traction, many fields are auditing their current degree of openness and transparency -often by evaluating their journal's TOP Factors, as was recently done in the fields of Sports Science (Hansford et al, 2022), Sleep (Spitschan et al, 2021), Herpetology (Marshall & Strine, 2021), and Human Factors in Computing (Ballou et al, 2021). Here, in the same vein, we evaluated TOP Factors in the field of CSD, which not only represents the current state of transparency and openness guidelines among journals, but can also serve as a baseline from which future progress can be measured.…”