Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines

By Garret Christensen (BITSS)


BITSS is proud to announce the publication of the Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines in Science. The Guidelines are a set of standards in eight areas of research publication:

  • Citation Standardstop1
  • Data Transparency
  • Analytic Methods (Code) Transparency
  • Research Materials Transparency
  • Design and Analysis Transparency
  • Preregistration of Sudies
  • Preregistration of Analysis Plans
  • Replication

For each of these areas, we developed three levels of stringency. The idea is for journals to publicly sign on in categories relevant to them, thereby affirming their desire to publish transparent and open research, and helping shift the research culture toward improved norms and practices. The guidelines are intended to be highly modular: journals may choose to adopt stringent standards in some areas but not others, and that is to be expected. We also expect these standards to evolve over time; this is version 1.0.1. Already we have 111 journals and 34 organization signed on, which at this stage indicates that they support the principles of open, transparent, and reproducible research, and will conduct a review of the guidelines for potential adoption within the year. (Do you represent a journal or organization with questions or interested in endorsing? Contact top@cos.io!)

For more information, the article in Science promoting the guidelines is here.

The guidelines homepage is here, with the guidelines themselves here.

The press release from our partner organization Center for Open Science is here.

The guidelines were developed at a meeting last November, which we blogged about here.