The Six Camps of Metascience

"Hypothesis: A lack of transparency enables bad practices and slows progress. The case for openness is both that transparency is good in itself and that science advances faster when it’s open by default.

Theory of change: Increase transparency → increase accountability → faster, more reliable science.

Policy relevance: This perspective shows up in transparency requirements in agency grants and in open access mandates, such as the 2022 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy memorandum requiring publications (and underlying data) to be available without an embargo and Plan S, a mandate for immediate-publication access from a coalition of European research funders. It has produced practical infrastructure that many researchers now use regularly, such as preprints, preregistration, and registered reports. A representative policy question: should agencies mandate open data, preregistration, and open access for federally funded research?

Evidence and methods: Historically, their approach has been normative and values-based, with some empirical analysis. The movement’s strength comes from a combination of advocacy-driven policy reform, platform development, and community norm-setting, increasingly paired with empirical evaluation of outcomes."