APA Joins as New Signatory to TOP Guidelines

"The American Psychological Association (APA), the nation's largest organization representing psychologists and psychological researchers has become a signatory to the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, an important step for helping to make research data and processes more open by default, according to the Center for Open Science (COS).

The TOP Guidelines are a community-driven effort to align research behaviors with scientific ideals. Transparency, open sharing, and reproducibility are core values of science, but not always part of daily practice. Journals, funders, and institutions can increase reproducibility and integrity of research by aligning their author or grantee guidelines with the TOP Guidelines.

The APA said it will officially begin implementing standardized disclosure requirements of data and underlying research materials (TOP Level 1). Furthermore, it encourages editors of core journals to move to Level 2 TOP (required transparency of data and research items when ethically possible). More information on the specific levels of adoption by each of the core journals will be coming in the first half of 2021...."