Disseminating Research Transparency in Perú, Bolivia, and Chile Catalyst Training ProjectInterdisciplinary
Fernando Hoces
Locations: Peru; Bolivia; Chile (final locations TBA)
The goal of this project is to bring to the attention of the academic communities in Peru, Bolivia, and Chile the recent developments in science regarding transparency and openness. This will be done in a two-fold format. First, a seminar-style talk will present the key issues (the reproducibility crisis, specification searching, and publication bias) and its solutions (pre-registrations, the TOP guidelines, and other tools for reproducible research). Second, a day-long workshop aimed at students will present the main tools for reproducible research (including R, Dynamic Documents, Git, and OSF). Increasing the scope of the research transparency community to this region can have additional benefits as it would bring highly talented researchers and students to elements of frontier research that are usually undisclosed in published papers.
Introducing the Transparent and Reproducible Research Paradigm in Ugandan Higher Institutions of Learning Catalyst Training ProjectInterdisciplinary
Jayne Tusiime Saint Kizito Omala
Locations: Universities across Uganda (final locations TBA)
The concept of transparent and reproducible research is not known, nor appreciated, by researchers in Uganda and many other developing countries. There is usually delayed adoption of new knowledge and technologies in developing countries because of the slower flow of information in these regions. The concept of transparent and reproducible research is still relatively new even in the developed world and almost unknown in the developing world. As Catalysts of this paradigm shift, we wish to introduce this concept in Uganda. Groundbreaking research, especially in health has been done in Uganda and much more research continues to be done. However, the practice of transparent and reproducible is non-existent. We thus propose to start in Uganda a project to train 500 established and upcoming researchers in conducting transparent and reproducible research.
Our target population will be graduate and undergraduate students from 30 universities in Uganda, as well as faculty of both public and private universities that train students in research disciplines where theses, dissertations or journal article publications are required for either degree award or promotion. The objective of the project will be to sensitize and create awareness about conducting transparent and reproducible research. Specifically, we shall conduct ten regional workshops across Uganda. Following this introduction, we plan to design course modules to incorporate into existing academic programs at the participating universities.
Development of a Graduate Public Health Online Course in Research Integrity, Transparency, and Reproducibility Catalyst Training ProjectEpidemiology
Dennis M. Gorman
Location: Texas A&M University, USA
There is now a growing recognition within the scientific community that flexibility in study design, data analysis, and the reporting of research findings is increasingly leading to the publication of misleading results that capitalize on chance and cannot be replicated. It has been suggested that the use of such practices, if not made apparent in a manuscript describing the results of a study, is a form of research misconduct. There is little doubt that the widespread use of such practices undermines the integrity of a scientific field as they produce a body of non-reproducible, random findings. Both epidemiology and general public health are among the fields of research in which questions have been raised about research integrity, transparency, and reproducibility.
This course will examine various threats to the integrity of research, the professional and organizational factors that produce these threats, and the solutions that have been suggested to improve research quality (such as registered reports, open data, and team of rivals). Upon completion of the course, students should have the ability to differentiate research that is conducted with integrity and capable of producing valid and reproducible findings from research that is conducted without integrity and produces chance results that are trivial and non-reproducible. Students should also have the ability to incorporate practices into their own research that will increase its transparency and ensure it is conducted with integrity.
Creating Pedagogical Materials to Enhance Research Transparency at UCSD Catalyst Training ProjectInterdisciplinary
Scott Desposato Craig McIntosh
This project involved creating a teaching module by the Policy Design and Evaluation Lab (PDEL) at UC San Diego (UCSD). The module is intended for use in graduate-level social science methodology courses—including those in political science, economics, sociology, and psychology—at UCSD and beyond. It covers the main causes of the credibility crisis in social science, as well as practical solutions for individual researchers to address these issues in their own work.
All materials are available online at PDEL’s GitHub page.