Open science

Open science is an approach emphasizing transparency of the research process and availability of its outcomes. Traditional scientific publications contain only processed research results, which is not sufficient to ensure replicability of the research. On the other hand, open science calls for availability of all intermediary steps of scientific work:

Preregistration denotes making hypotheses public before actually conducting a study. Preregistration precludes changing hypotheses after data collection and reporting only selected parts of research results, and thus enables the consumers of research to trust the obtained results of scientific work more.

Open materials denote making public all the materials that were used for data collection: questionnaires, stimuli, software used for data collection, etc. Open materials enable other researchers to replicate the study and critically evaluate it.

Open data denote making public the data collected for a study. Open data enable other researchers to reproduce the analysis which was used to obtain the reported results and to use the data for answering their own research questions.

Open code denotes making public the code used for data analysis. Together with open data, it enables reproducibility of statistical analysis and it can help other researchers if they need to use the same analytical process for their own data.

Open access denotes making the scientific article public freely available to everyone. The traditional scientific journals require the readers to access articles through an institutional access or for a fee. It is possible to ensure open access by publishing in open access journals or by publicly posting a preprint or a postprint—a version of the article not formatted by a journal which was either submitted to a journal or accepted in it.

Links:

Open Science Framework: A platform where researchers can preregister research, and make public open materials, data, code, or preprints. Integration with services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, GitHub is available.

Researchbox: A platform where researchers can preregister research, and make public open materials, data, code, or preprints.

Other literature and resources:

Open Scholarship Knowledge Base: A database of resources about open science.

7 Easy Steps to Open Science: An Annotated Reading List: An annotated list of recommended publications on open science.

Open Science: What, Why, and How: A book chapter introducing open science.