Garret Christensen–BITSS Project Scientist
Here are a few quick links related to transparency in academic publication:
1. Finally, it’s not just psych journals that publish registered reports (results-blind review):
“Revista de Ciencia Política invites scholars to take part in a special issue on research transparency in the social sciences and specifically in political science.The goal of this special issue is threefold. First, it seeks to bring debates about boosting transparency—which has received prominent attention especially among scholars using experimental methods—closer to the study of Latin American politics. Second, it aims to foster methodological debate about the virtues and challenges of study pre-registration, results-blind review, and other means of limiting publication biases in the social sciences. Third, it aims to highlight substantive research that uses these methods to bolster the transparency and credibility of research results. This initiative will also establish the Revista de Ciencia Política as a journal that accepts results-blind review of registered pre-analysis plans.”
See the call for submissions. The deadline is September 1.
2. This new paper by Westgate, Riskind, and Nosek on implicit preferences went super-transparent and published the referee reports with the final paper. (This is one of several suggestions that Nosek and Bar-Anan proposed in their first Scientific Utopia article.) Authors can choose at the time of submission whether they want to pursue this. Will this increase the quality of peer review over time? As a young researcher myself I could imagine being scared to be too harsh of a senior’s paper, but the review can be blinded, so that may help alleviate this concern.
For more, you can read an interview with transparency advocate and senior editor Simine Vazire.
3. Over 500 journals have signed on to the TOP Guidelines!