Paths towards greater consensus building in experimental biology

Abstract

In a recent editorial, the Editors-in-Chief of Journal of Experimental Biology argued that consensus building, data sharing, and better integration across disciplines are needed to address the urgent scientific challenges posed by climate change. We agree and expand on the importance of cross-disciplinary integration and transparency to improve consensus building and advance climate change research in experimental biology. We investigated reproducible research practices in experimental biology through a review of open data and analysis code associated with empirical studies on three debated paradigms and for unrelated studies published in leading journals in comparative physiology and behavioural ecology over the last 10 years. Nineteen per cent of studies on the three paradigms had open data, and 3.2% had open code. Similarly, 12.1% of studies in the journals we examined had open data, and 3.1% had open code. Previous research indicates that only 50% of shared datasets are complete and re-usable, suggesting that fewer than 10% of studies in experimental biology have usable open data. Encouragingly, our results indicate that reproducible research practices are increasing over time, with data sharing rates in some journals reaching 75% in recent years. Rigorous empirical research in experimental biology is key to understanding the mechanisms by which climate change affects organisms, and ultimately promotes evidence-based conservation policy and practice. We argue that a greater adoption of open science practices, with a particular focus on FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable) data and code, represents a much-needed paradigm shift towards improved transparency, cross-disciplinary integration, and consensus building to maximize the contributions of experimental biologists in addressing the impacts of environmental change on living organisms.

Current State of Microplastic Pollution Research Data: Trends in Availability and Sources of Open Data

“…The challenge of finding and accessing research data is not unique to the microplastics research community. Similar patterns in data sharing practices are common in well-established disciplines such as social sciences, water resources, lowtemperature geochemistry, ecology, and health sciences (Stagge et al, 2019;Brantley et al, 2021;Tedersoo et al, 2021;Roche et al, 2022b). For example, Stagge et al (2019) assessed data availability and research reproducibility in hydrology and water resources across several journals and found that, while approximately 70% of the sampled articles stated some materials were available, only around 48% of the materials could be accessed online.…”

“…For example, Stagge et al (2019) assessed data availability and research reproducibility in hydrology and water resources across several journals and found that, while approximately 70% of the sampled articles stated some materials were available, only around 48% of the materials could be accessed online. In experimental biology, only one in five papers (21.5%) included a data sharing statement or associated open data (Roche et al, 2022b). An overview of published research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) (Government of Canada, 2021), a federal funding agency which has an explicit data sharing expectation, showed that for a subset of CIHR funded projects, only 45.2% of studies had readily accessible data (Read et al, 2021).…”

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The methods outlined by Read et al (2021) and Roche et al (2022b) were adapted to determine if authors of microplastic research articles shared the underlying data. A Web of Science database search was performed using the Boolean phrase (microplastic OR microplastics)

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Elevating the impact of conservation physiology by building a community devoted to excellence, transparency, ethics, integrity and mutual respect

“…Open data and improved transparency make it possible to scrutinize other researchers’ data ( Roche et al ., 2022 ). Conservation Physiology embraces the spirit of the FAIR principles (see https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/ ) whereby data (and code) associated with papers are findable, accessible, interoperable and repeatable.…”

Slow improvement to the archiving quality of open datasets shared by researchers in ecology and evolution

“…Now, 20% of journals publishing research in E&E mandate open data [17]. Strong journal policies are effective at ensuring that more datasets are shared [18][19][20], which is often touted as a win for open science [21]. Yet, problems persist [19,22,23].…”