Replication, data access, and transparency in social
science
·
bY R. MICHAEL ALVAREZ
Improving the
transparency of the research published in Political
Analysis has been an important priority for Jonathan Katz
and I as co-editors of the journal. We spent a great deal of time over the past
two years developing and implementing policies and procedures to insure that
all studies published in Political Analysis have replication
data available through thejournal’s Dataverse. At this point in time, we have over 220
studies available in the journal’s Dataverse archive, and those studies have
had more than 14,400 downloads. We see this as a major accomplishment for Political
Analysis.
We are also optimistic
that soon many political science journals will join us in implementing similar
replication standards. An increasing number of journals developing and
implementing replication standards will improve the quality of research in
political science, aid in the distribution of materials that can be used in our
classrooms, and make the publication process more straightforward for authors.
In late September,
Jonathan and I had the opportunity to participate in a two-day “Workshop on
Data Access and Research Transparency” at the University of
Michigan. The workshop is part of an initiative sponsored by the American Political Science
Association (APSA) to develop a discipline-wide discussion of
how to improve research transparency in political science. The primary goal was
to bring the editors of the primary journals in political science into this
conversation. While there is no doubt that there was widespread agreement among
the journal editors present that making research more transparent and making
data more accessible are important goals, there are still open questions about
how such goals can be implemented.
One of the major
products of this workshop was a statement of principles for political science
journals. While the statement has not yet been released, it contains a short
set of principles, the most important of which are that the signing journals
will require authors to make replication materials accessible, and that the
signing journals will take steps to make the research published in their
journal more transparent. Political Analysis is one of the
signatories of this statement: we will continue to work to improve the
accessibility of data and other research materials for the papers we publish
in Political Analysis, as well as assist other journals as they
work to develop their own replication and research transparency standards.
As part of this
initiative, we have revised our author and reviewer instructions. Our new
instructions include:
1. Updated and clarified standards for how authors should present
empirical results in their submissions, in particular tables and figures.
2. More detailed instructions on our replication requirement.
3. Encouragement and guidance for authors who wish to pre-register
their research studies.
We hope that other
journals will follow our lead, and that they will quickly develop strong
standards for replication and research transparency. The APSA initiative is
laudable, and it is helping to position political science as a leader in these
areas, certainly in the social sciences but also throughout the sciences and
humanities. We welcome the APSA DART initiative, and will continue to work to
position Political
Analysis as a leader in developing and implementing data
access and research transparency standards.
Headline image credit:
Circuit board. CC0 via Pixabay.