Psychology Department, Ashland University, Ashland, OR, USA.
Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Br J Psychol. 2024 Aug;115(3):497-534. doi: 10.1111/bjop.12700. Epub 2024 Mar 22.
Open research practices seek to enhance the transparency and reproducibility of research. While there is evidence of increased uptake in these practices, such as study preregistration and open data, facilitated by new infrastructure and policies, little research has assessed general uptake of such practices across psychology university researchers. The current study estimates psychologists' level of engagement in open research practices across universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland, while also assessing possible explanatory factors that may impact their engagement. Data were collected from 602 psychology researchers in the United Kingdom and Ireland on the extent to which they have implemented various practices (e.g., use of preprints, preregistration, open data, open materials). Here we present the summarized descriptive results, as well as considering differences between various categories of researcher (e.g., career stage, subdiscipline, methodology), and examining the relationship between researcher's practices and their self-reported capability, opportunity, and motivation (COM-B) to engage in open research practices. Results show that while there is considerable variability in engagement of open research practices, differences across career stage and subdiscipline of psychology are small by comparison. We observed consistent differences according to respondent's research methodology and based on the presence of institutional support for open research. COM-B dimensions were collectively significant predictors of engagement in open research, with automatic motivation emerging as a consistently strong predictor. We discuss these findings, outline some of the challenges experienced in this study, and offer suggestions and recommendations for future research. Estimating the prevalence of responsible research practices is important to assess sustained behaviour change in research reform, tailor educational training initiatives, and to understand potential factors that might impact engagement.
开放研究实践旨在提高研究的透明度和可重复性。尽管有证据表明，由于新的基础设施和政策的支持，这些实践（如研究预注册和开放数据）的采用率有所提高，但很少有研究评估心理学大学研究人员对这些实践的总体采用情况。本研究估计了英国和爱尔兰各大学心理学家参与开放研究实践的程度，同时评估了可能影响他们参与的因素。从英国和爱尔兰的 602 名心理学研究人员那里收集了有关他们实施各种实践（例如，使用预印本、预注册、开放数据、开放材料）的程度的数据。在这里，我们展示了总结性描述性结果，同时考虑了研究人员各种类别的差异（例如，职业阶段、子学科、方法），并研究了研究人员实践与其自我报告的从事开放研究实践的能力、机会和动机（COM-B）之间的关系。结果表明，尽管开放研究实践的参与度存在很大差异，但与心理学的职业阶段和子学科相比，差异较小。我们根据受访者的研究方法观察到了一致的差异，并根据机构对开放研究的支持情况进行了区分。COM-B 维度是参与开放研究的共同重要预测因素，自动动机始终是一个强有力的预测因素。我们讨论了这些发现，概述了本研究中遇到的一些挑战，并为未来的研究提供了建议和建议。估计负责任的研究实践的流行程度对于评估研究改革中的持续行为变化、调整教育培训计划以及了解可能影响参与的因素非常重要。
