Psychologists Launch a Bare-All Research Initiative - ScienceInsider

"A group of psychologists are launching a project this week that they hope will make studies in their field radically more transparent and prompt other fields to open up as well. With a pledge of $5.25 million from private supporters, they have set up an outfit called the Center for Open Science. It is collaborating with an established journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science, to solicit work from authors who are willing to work completely in the open and have their studies replicated. Authors will be asked to first publish an experimental design and then, after a public vetting, collect data. Findings come in a separate publication. Authors would get credit for all steps in this process: experimental designs, peer review, delivering results, and replicating them. In an ideal world, all research would be as transparent as this, argues Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. The new venture is the brainchild of Nosek and his graduate student Jeffrey Spies. They say it grew naturally out of a quest by Nosek and others to test how much of psychological science is reproducible. But the center's plans go far beyond psychology and replicability. For example, it will promote a publishing model that involves peer review at the earliest stage of research, and the critique of experimental designs would be transparent rather than anonymous. Perspectives is adding a special section to test the model. Science Insider spoke with Nosek about the Center for Open Science and its goals. The conversation has been edited for brevity ..."