In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low replicability in other fields. As a result, I recently wrote a paper with more than 30 authors in which we propose an agenda for adopting open science practices in Communication. After a discussion of the biggest problems (including low powered studies and various questionable research practices), we make the following seven suggestions:
- publish materials, data, and code
- preregister studies and submit registered reports
- conduct replications
- collaborate
- foster open science skills
- implement Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines
- incentivize open science practices
The article was published in the Journal of Communication. It is open access and can thus be downloaded here. We hope that this agenda will spark a constructive conversation in our field and that scholars will explore even more options and benefits of implementing open science practices in various subfields. On the one hand, we want to invite you to sign and endorse the agenda (which you can do here). On the other hand, the Journal of Communication is planning a special issue on open science. If you are interested, please find the call for papers here.
