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Open Science

Statement on practices of transparency and open science

The Doctoral School of the Institute for Psychology and the Graz Open Science Initiative (https://psychologie.uni-graz.at/de/social psychology/gosi/) aim to contribute to transparency and open scientific practices. In this sense, the Doctoral School provides information and materials for the implementation of open scientific practices. These are in line with the Transparency and Openess Promotion (TOP) Guidelines (see https://topfactor.org/).

The application of such practices is useful, as they promote the reproducibility and replicability of analyses and studies, respectively, to counteract publication bias (Scheel et al., 2021).

The doctoral school encourages the following practices

Preregistration

Before the data are collected for a study (or before the researchers look into the data for the first time), researchers can do a preregistration of their study in which they state their hypotheses, variables, and analysis plans. Preregistration is not intended to bind researchers to the single preregistered analysis.Instead, a preregistration should enable them to clearly distinguish in retrospect what they have thought a priori and what they have derived a posteriori. In other words, preregistration makes it easier to separate confirmatory from exploratory analyses (see Nosek et al., 2018).

Preregistrations can be carried out on the Open Science Framework (https://help.osf.io/article/162-start-a-registration) or the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (https://prereg-psych.org/index.php/rrp ). Additionally, an accepted Registered Report (i.e., a preregistration with a peer review before data collection) is equivalent to a preregistration (journals that offer Registered Reports: https://www.cos.io/initiatives/registered-reports). Moreover, PhD students are encouraged to use the “Peer Community In Registered Reports” platform, which offers standardized review procedures for Registered Reports (https://rr.peercommunityin.org/about).

FAIR Data/Materials

The availability of materials, data and analysis scripts facilitates the traceability (e.g., for reviewers) of the research process and the reproducibility of results. Scientific repositories allow to deposit large amounts of data and commented code (e.g., via R or Python) online. Note that not all data should be made openly available (e.g., sensitive data.) One distinguishes “open” from “FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable)” data (see https://ub.uni-graz.at/de/services/publikationsservices/forschungdatenmanagement/fair-data-und-open-data/).

Materials and paradigms can also be made public (as long as there is no copyright from other researchers, journals and/or publishers) to facilitate replication of the study by other researchers. The procedure is similar to sharing data and can be meaningfully combined with it. For example, it is possible to document in open notebooks which materials and methods were used to collect certain data.

In preregistrations, students should also describe in detail how they will manage their data (including metadata; such as scales, labels, exact questions). For complex, data-intensive studies (e.g., via fMRI, EEG, eye-tracking, biophysiological measurements, etc.) a data standardization via the BIDS format should be considered. For this purpose, please contact the technical assistants of your respective sections.

Open Access (OA)

Published articles of the dissertation should ideally be published open access (OA), as not all scientifically interested persons have a subscription to a publisher. The University of Graz has numerous OA agreements with publishers so that articles can be made easily accessible (see https://ub.uni-graz.at/de/services/open-access/open-access-approach/). In rare cases, where preferred journals do not offer an OA option (or it is very expensive), however, the articles can often be made accessible via preprint servers (“green” OA).

For first-submitted articles version (i.e., before a review), a publication via a preprint server is usually possible at any time. An accepted version can be made available on a preprint server, personal website, or university repository after a certain embargo period (usually one or two years). For more details visit the Sherpa-Romeo platform (https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/).

References:
Banks, G. C., Field, J. G., Oswald, F. L., O’Boyle, E. H., Landis, R. S., Rupp, D. E., & Rogelberg, S. G. (2019). Answers to 18 Questions About Open Science Practices. Journal of Business and Psychology, 34(3), 257–270. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-018-9547-8

Heycke, T., & Spitzer, L. (2019). Screen Recordings as a Tool to Document Computer Assisted Data Collection Procedures. Psychologica Belgica, 59(1), 269–280. https://doi.org/10.5334/pb.490

Nosek, B. A., Ebersole, C. R., DeHaven, A. C., & Mellor, D. T. (2018). The preregistration revolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(11), 2600–2606. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1708274114

Scheel, A. M., Schijen, M. R. M. J., & Lakens, D. (2021). An Excess of Positive Results: Comparing the Standard Psychology Literature With Registered Reports. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 4(2), 25152459211007468. doi.org/10.1177/25152459211007467

Soderberg, C. K. (2018). Using OSF to Share Data: A Step-by-Step Guide. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 1(1), 115–120. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918757689

Contact

Head of Doctoral School
Universitaetsplatz 2/EG, 8010 Graz
Assoz. Prof. Mag.rer.nat. PhD Stephan VOGEL Phone:+43 (0)316 380 - 8478

Office hour:
on appointment

Helpful

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