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OPEN SCIENCE PRACTICES FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS 1 Easing Into Open Science: A Tutorial for Graduate Students Ummul-Kiram Kathawalla*1 Priya Silverstein2,3 Moin Syed1 1University of Minnesota, 2University of Surrey, 3Lancaster University *corresponding author Version Date: May 8, 2020 Submitted for review Please address correspondence to: Ummul-Kiram Kathawalla [email protected]
OPEN SCIENCE PRACTICES FOR GRADUATE STUDENTS 1 Easing Into Open Science: A Guide for Graduate Students and Their Advisors Ummul-Kiram Kathawalla*1 Priya Silverstein2,3 Moin Syed1 1University of Minnesota, 2University of Surrey, 3Lancaster University *corresponding author Accepted for publication in: Collabra: Psychology Version Date: December 8, 2020 Please address correspondence to: Ummul-Kiram Kathawalla [email protected]
Methodology and Research Practice Easing Into Open Science: A Guide for Graduate Students and Their Easing Into Open Science: A Guide for Graduate Students and Their Advisors Advisors Ummul-Kiram Kathawalla 1 a , Priya Silverstein 2 , Moin Syed 1 1 Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, Minnesota, US, 2 Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK Keywords: preregistration, reproducibility, advising, tutorial, graduate students, open science https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.18684 Collabra: Psychology Vol. 7, Issue 1, 2021 This article provides a roadmap to assist graduate students and their advisors to engage in open science practices. We suggest eight open science practices that novice graduate students could begin adopting today. The topics we cover include journal clubs, project workZow, preprints, reproducible code, data sharing, transparent writing, preregistration, and registered reports. To address concerns about not knowing how to engage in open science practices, we provide a difYculty rating of each behavior (easy, medium, difYcult), present them in order of suggested adoption, and follow the format of what , why , how , and worries . We give graduate students ideas on how to approach conversations with their advisors/collaborators, ideas on how to integrate open science practices within the graduate school framework, and speciYc resources on how to engage with each behavior. We emphasize that engaging in open science behaviors need not be an all or nothing approach, but rather graduate students can engage with any number of the behaviors outlined. Open science is best described as “an umbrella term used to refer to the concepts of openness, transparency, rigor, reproducibility, replicability, and accumulation of knowledge, which are considered fundamental features of science” (Crüwell et al., 2018, p. 3), along with “openly creating, sharing, and accessing research” (Bosman, 2020). The Open Science Movement developed in response to a variety of pervasive issues throughout scientiYc research, including lack of accessibility, transparency, credibility, and reproducibility (Spellman, 2015; Syed, 2019). As doubt was cast upon foundational empirical work, there emerged a desire to better understand the conceptual, methodological, and analytic choices made throughout the research cycle, as doing so enhances knowledge among the scientiYc community and permits more informed assessments of credibility (Vazire, 2017). Topics related to open science in psychology have received major attention in the last decade, including new terminology, new methodological and statistical procedures, new journals, and even whole new sub-Yelds (e.g., Meta-science, https://metascience.com/; see also Nelson et al., 2018; Spellman et al., 2018). This explosion, along with the fact that part of open science involves more rapid dissemination than the traditional scientiYc model, has resulted in a barrage of new Yndings, methods, and practices. All of this can be quite overwhelming to any researcher trying to get a handle on best practices, but especially for graduate students who are new to the Yeld and are quickly trying to learn both methodological and substantive content. The purpose of this guide is to provide a roadmap for how graduate students, their advisors, and those new to open science can wade through this confusion and begin to engage with open science practices. A sense of paralysis associated with not knowing where to begin with open science is a commonly expressed sentiment. Moreover, some may feel like they need to immediately adopt all open science practices in order to “truly do open science.” Additionally, some researchers may not see certain open science practices (e.g., preregistration) as relevant to their research practice, and therefore conclude that open science is not something they should be concerned with. We reject this “all or nothing” view and join with others who advocate for a selective approach to open science, with the accumulation of practices over time (Bergmann, 2018; Corker, 2018; Nuijten, 2019; Syed, 2019). Whereas there are other excellent articles on how to get started with open science (e.g., Crüwell et al., 2018; Lewis, 2019; Nuijten, 2019), including Allen and Mehler’s (2019) article on beneYts to early career researchers, we see a great need for a guide that is studentfocused and offers concrete suggestions. Of course, the relevance of our recommendations is not limited to graduate students—anyone who is new to open science should Ynd them useful—but we prioritized the graduate student perspective, both in terms of how graduate students can engage with open science and how advisors can better support their students’ engagement with open science. Additional- [email protected] a Kathawalla, U.-K., Silverstein, P., & Syed, M. (2021). Easing Into Open Science: A Guide for Graduate Students and Their Advisors. Collabra: Psychology , 7 (1). https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.18684 Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/collabra/article-pdf/7/1/18684/450844/collabra_2021_7_1_18684.pdf by University of Zurich user on 10 January 2023