ArticleRoyal Society open science2020
An empirical assessment of transparency and reproducibility-related research practices in the social sciences (2014-2017).
Article in Royal Society open science, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A worldwide itinerary of research ethics in science for a better social responsibility and justice: a bibliometric analysis and review.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2025Pooled it
- Estimating the prevalence of discrepancies between study registrations and publications: a systematic review and meta-analyses.BMJ open · 2023Pooled it
- How methodological cues shape trust in psychological research and legal judgements: a vignette study.Royal Society open science · 2026Article
- Reproducibility in biomedical research.Nature medicine · 2026Review
- "It makes sense to me": Examining data file column names in the visual cognitive literature.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- A narrative review on cost considerations in early intervention for deaf and/or hard-of-hearing children in Africa.Health policy and planning · 2026Review
- Accuracy in parameter estimation and simulation approaches for sample-size planning accounting for item effects.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Interpretations of reproducibility crisis in medical education research: a qualitative study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Risk of bias and low reproducibility in meta-analytic evidence from fast-tracked publications during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- A sharing practices review of the visual search and eye movements literature reveals recommendations for our field and others.Behavior research methods · 2025Review
- Standardizing Survey Data Collection to Enhance Reproducibility: Development and Comparative Evaluation of the ReproSchema Ecosystem.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Transparency in epidemiological analyses of cohort data a case study of the Norwegian mother, father, and child cohort study (MoBa).BMC medical research methodology · 2025Article
- Transparency in Cognitive Training Meta-analyses: A Meta-review.Neuropsychology review · 2025Review
- Transparency, Reproducibility, and Accessibility of Clinical and Experimental Studies in Allergy (TRACES): Study design and protocol.The journal of allergy and clinical immunology. Global · 2025Article
- How Transparent and Reproducible Are Studies That Use Animal Models of Opioid Addiction?Addiction biology · 2025Article
- Examining the availability/findability of stimuli employed in social media and body image research.PloS one · 2025Article
- Assessing computational reproducibility in Behavior Research Methods.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Biomedical researchers' perspectives on the reproducibility of research.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Assessing transparency practices in dental randomized controlled trials.BMC medical research methodology · 2024Article
- Expanding the data Ark: an attempt to make the data from highly cited social science papers publicly available.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Serious concerns about research quality have catalysed a number of reform initiatives intended to improve transparency and reproducibility and thus facilitate self-correction, increase efficiency and enhance research credibility. Meta-research has evaluated the merits of some individual initiatives; however, this may not capture broader trends reflecting the cumulative contribution of these efforts. In this study, we manually examined a random sample of 250 articles in order to estimate the prevalence of a range of transparency and reproducibility-related indicators in the social sciences literature published between 2014 and 2017. Few articles indicated availability of materials (16/151, 11% [95% confidence interval, 7% to 16%]), protocols (0/156, 0% [0% to 1%]), raw data (11/156, 7% [2% to 13%]) or analysis scripts (2/156, 1% [0% to 3%]), and no studies were pre-registered (0/156, 0% [0% to 1%]). Some articles explicitly disclosed funding sources (or lack of; 74/236, 31% [25% to 37%]) and some declared no conflicts of interest (36/236, 15% [11% to 20%]). Replication studies were rare (2/156, 1% [0% to 3%]). Few studies were included in evidence synthesis via systematic review (17/151, 11% [7% to 16%]) or meta-analysis (2/151, 1% [0% to 3%]). Less than half the articles were publicly available (101/250, 40% [34% to 47%]). Minimal adoption of transparency and reproducibility-related research practices could be undermining the credibility and efficiency of social science research. The present study establishes a baseline that can be revisited in the future to assess progress.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.