{"doi":"10.1098/rsos.190806","title":"An empirical assessment of transparency and reproducibility-related research practices in the social sciences (2014–2017)","abstract":"Serious concerns about research quality have catalysed a number of reform initiatives intended to improve transparency and reproducibility and thus facilitate self-correction, increase efficiency and enhance research credibility. Meta-research has evaluated the merits of some individual initiatives; however, this may not capture broader trends reflecting the cumulative contribution of these efforts. In this study, we manually examined a random sample of 250 articles in order to estimate the prevalence of a range of transparency and reproducibility-related indicators in the social sciences literature published between 2014 and 2017. Few articles indicated availability of materials (16/151, 11% [95% confidence interval, 7% to 16%]), protocols (0/156, 0% [0% to 1%]), raw data (11/156, 7% [2% to 13%]) or analysis scripts (2/156, 1% [0% to 3%]), and no studies were pre-registered (0/156, 0% [0% to 1%]). Some articles explicitly disclosed funding sources (or lack of; 74/236, 31% [25% to 37%]) and some declared no conflicts of interest (36/236, 15% [11% to 20%]). Replication studies were rare (2/156, 1% [0% to 3%]). Few studies were included in evidence synthesis via systematic review (17/151, 11% [7% to 16%]) or meta-analysis (2/151, 1% [0% to 3%]). Less than half the articles were publicly available (101/250, 40% [34% to 47%]). Minimal adoption of transparency and reproducibility-related research practices could be undermining the credibility and efficiency of social science research. The present study establishes a baseline that can be revisited in the future to assess progress.","journal":"Royal Society Open Science","year":2020,"id":11472,"datarank":0.7254422860427218,"base_score":4.836281906951478,"endowment":4.836281906951478,"self_citation_contribution":0.7254422860427218,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.7254422860427218,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":125,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.057,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-02-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":20387,"name":"Joshua D. Wallach","orcid":"0000-0002-2816-6905","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":23967,"name":"Mallory C. Kidwell","orcid":"0000-0003-4339-8437","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":35921,"name":"Theiss Bendixen","orcid":"0000-0001-5729-1281","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":11433,"name":"Sophia Crüwell","orcid":"0000-0003-4178-5820","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":148,"name":"John P. A. Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":875,"name":"Tom Elis Hardwicke","orcid":"0000-0001-9485-4952","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":47,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}