Signaling the trustworthiness of science

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Abstract

Trust in science increases when scientists and the outlets certifying their work honor science’s norms. Scientists often fail to signal to other scientists and, perhaps more importantly, the public that these norms are being upheld. They could do so as they generate, certify, and react to each other’s findings: for example, by promoting the use and value of evidence, transparent reporting, self-correction, replication, a culture of critique, and controls for bias. A number of approaches for authors and journals would lead to more effective signals of trustworthiness at the article level. These include article badging, checklists, a more extensive withdrawal ontology, identity verification, better forward linking, and greater transparency.

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Most cited references 18

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Is Open Access

Badges to Acknowledge Open Practices: A Simple, Low-Cost, Effective Method for Increasing Transparency

Mallory Kidwell, Ljiljana Lazarević, Erica Baranski … (2016)

Beginning January 2014, Psychological Science gave authors the opportunity to signal open data and materials if they qualified for badges that accompanied published articles. Before badges, less than 3% of Psychological Science articles reported open data. After badges, 23% reported open data, with an accelerating trend; 39% reported open data in the first half of 2015, an increase of more than an order of magnitude from baseline. There was no change over time in the low rates of data sharing among comparison journals. Moreover, reporting openness does not guarantee openness. When badges were earned, reportedly available data were more likely to be actually available, correct, usable, and complete than when badges were not earned. Open materials also increased to a weaker degree, and there was more variability among comparison journals. Badges are simple, effective signals to promote open practices and improve preservation of data and materials by using independent repositories.

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Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals.

Richard Smith (2006)

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A randomised controlled trial of an Intervention to Improve Compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines (IICARus)

Kaitlyn Hair, Malcolm Macleod, Emily Sena … (2019)

Background The ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines are widely endorsed but compliance is limited. We sought to determine whether journal-requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist improves full compliance with the guidelines. Methods In a randomised controlled trial, manuscripts reporting in vivo animal research submitted to PLOS ONE (March–June 2015) were randomly allocated to either requested completion of an ARRIVE checklist or current standard practice. Authors, academic editors, and peer reviewers were blinded to group allocation. Trained reviewers performed outcome adjudication in duplicate by assessing manuscripts against an operationalised version of the ARRIVE guidelines that consists 108 items. Our primary outcome was the between-group differences in the proportion of manuscripts meeting all ARRIVE guideline checklist subitems. Results We randomised 1689 manuscripts (control: n = 844, intervention: n = 845), of which 1269 were sent for peer review and 762 (control: n = 340; intervention: n = 332) accepted for publication. No manuscript in either group achieved full compliance with the ARRIVE checklist. Details of animal husbandry (ARRIVE subitem 9b) was the only subitem to show improvements in reporting, with the proportion of compliant manuscripts rising from 52.1 to 74.1% (X 2 = 34.0, df = 1, p = 2.1 × 10−7) in the control and intervention groups, respectively. Conclusions These results suggest that altering the editorial process to include requests for a completed ARRIVE checklist is not enough to improve compliance with the ARRIVE guidelines. Other approaches, such as more stringent editorial policies or a targeted approach on key quality items, may promote improvements in reporting. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41073-019-0069-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A

Journal ID (hwp): pnas

Journal ID (pmc): pnas

Journal ID (publisher-id): PNAS

Title: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Publisher: National Academy of Sciences

ISSN (Print): 0027-8424

ISSN (Electronic): 1091-6490

Publication date (Print): 24 September 2019

Publication date (Electronic): 23 September 2019

Publication date PMC-release: 23 September 2019

Volume: 116

Issue: 39

Pages: 19231-19236

Affiliations

[1] ^aAnnenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania , Philadelphia, PA 19104;

[2] ^bNational Academy of Sciences , Washington, DC 20001;

[3] ^cPublic Library of Science , San Francisco, CA 94111;

[4] ^dCold Spring Harbor Laboratory , Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724

Author notes

¹To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: naspresident@ 123456nas.edu .

Edited by Susan Hanson, Clark University, Worcester, MA, and approved August 15, 2019 (received for review July 29, 2019)

Author contributions: K.H.J., M.M., and R.S. organized the workshop that led to the framing of the concepts presented here; K.H.J., M.M., V.K., and R.S. designed research; K.H.J. performed research; K.H.J. analyzed data; M.M. wrote the first draft, V.K. made substantial edits, and K.H.J. wrote the final, condensed version; and authorship order was determined by coin flip.