APS in San Fran 1: Open Science is Maturing

It was, as ever, a great pleasure to catch up with Bob last weekend. We were in San Francisco for the APS Convention. That convention has been for the last five years or so a hotbed of discussion about Open Science–many times I felt I was witnessing decisions about what best practice science now should be. Open Science practices were being identified and refined, as I listened and watched!

This year the convention was back in the same place as four years ago, when my workshop on the new statistics and OS was filmed. That resulted in the six videos available here.

My sense last year and especially this year is that OS practices are maturing. A few years ago we discussed evidence of the replication crisis and possible strategies for improvement. But now OS badges have been in the field for a few years, preregistration is widely recognised, and the emphasis has shifted to actually doing these good things, and providing encouragement and facilities for researchers generally to adopt OS practices.

As an example, it’s no longer a matter of explaining why preregistration helps and encouraging folks to use it, but now we discuss the best ways to ensure that preregistration is fully detailed and includes a detailed plan for the statistical analysis.

Again this year there were a number of lively symposia in which OS issues were debated, but now with some data about how we’re tracking. As an example of a great symposium contribution I’ll mention 19 Ways Journal Editors Can Promote Transparency and Replicability by Steve Lindsay, editor-in-chief of Psychological Science. The 19 encompass a very broad range of good practices, from encouraging preregistration to suggesting several strategies for improving statistical practices in articles that make the grade and are published. See a pdf of Steve’s slides here.

Below is a pic from those slides.

Geoff