The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has expressed its support for the principles of transparency and openness. The association has joined an effort to reform research and publishing practices.
Transparency and reproducibility are cornerstones of how science creates knowledge. Evidence for scientific claims should be shared openly so others can evaluate, question, replicate, or extend scientific studies. When evidence cannot be reproduced independently, then it should not be accepted as credible evidence. Despite their importance, transparency and reproducibility are not often rewarded. Lack of transparency reduces the credibility of published results, which in turn undercuts the efficient and effective use of funding to support scientific advancement. To improve research transparency, the scientific community is undertaking a series of reforms.
The Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Committee has published the TOP Guidelines, a set of author guidelines that journals can adopt to enhance the transparency of the research they publish. These guidelines represent a concrete and actionable strategy toward improving research and publishing practices. Already, 111 journals and 34 organisations, including ARL, have expressed support for the principles of transparency and openness and have pledged to consider adopting them within the next year. ARL joins a broad coalition across scientific disciplines including societies such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, and the Association for Psychological Science.
The TOP Guidelines are modular in nature, encompassing eight standards with three levels of increasing commitment to transparency for each. The modularity allows for journals to select the standards and levels that are practical and appropriate to their discipline.
TOP is first and foremost a transparency initiative that promotes disclosure of data, code, and procedures. By allowing others in the scientific community to retrace the steps that produced a research finding, transparency reduces cost, enables researchers to leverage many datasets to establish greater precision in estimating effects, ultimately accelerating the pace of scientific discovery.
The guidelines are the output of a November 2014 meeting at the Center for Open Science (COS), co-hosted with the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) and Science Magazine, and funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The TOP Committee is a diverse group of 39 journal editors, society leaders, funders, and other stakeholders in the behavioural and social sciences.
