Abstract
Energy use is of crucial importance for the global challenge of climate change, and also is an essential part of daily life. Hence, research on energy needs to be robust and valid. Other scientific disciplines have experienced a reproducibility crisis, i.e. existing findings could not be reproduced in new studies. The ‘TReQ’ approach is recommended to improve research practices in the energy field and arrive at greater transparency, reproducibility and quality. A highly adaptable suite of tools is presented that can be applied to energy research approaches across this multidisciplinary and fast-changing field. In particular, the following tools are introduced – preregistration of studies, making data and code publicly available, using preprints, and employing reporting guidelines – to heighten the standard of research practices within the energy field. The wider adoption of these tools can facilitate greater trust in the findings of research used to inform evidence-based policy and practice in the energy field. <strong><em>Practice relevance</em></strong> <strong></strong>Concrete suggestions are provided for how and when to use preregistration, open data and code, preprints, and reporting guidelines, offering practical guidance for energy researchers for improving the TReQ of their research. The paper shows how employing tools around these concepts at appropriate stages of the research process can assure end-users of the research that good practices were followed. This will not only increase trust in research findings but also can deliver other co-benefits for researchers, e.g. more efficient processes and a more collaborative and open research culture. Increased TReQ can help remove barriers to accessing research both within and outside of academia, improving the visibility and impact of research findings. Finally, a checklist is presented that can be added to publications to show how the tools were used.
Highlights
This paper adopts a narrower definition of good research practices, namely research practices related to transparency, reproducibility and quality (TReQ)
This is similar to Hardwicke et al.’s (2020) discussion of ‘reproducibility-related research practices’, but takes a broader view as, for reasons outlined in the paper, a strict notion of reproducibility is not applicable to all research in the energy field
From the suite of approaches that support TReQ research, this paper focuses on four: study preregistration, reporting guidelines, preprints and code/data-sharing
Summary
A range of tools and practices have been developed by the scientific community to guide researchers on what to share, and when (e.g. the Open Science Framework—OSF) These include guidelines on which details of studies to report (e.g. Equator Network 2016), preregistration of theory-testing work (Chambers et al 2014), and the sharing of data and code (Van den Eynden et al 2009; Wilkinson et al 2016). A range of topics revolving around the intersection of energy technologies, fuels, and resources on one side; and social processes and influences—including communities of energy users, people affected by energy production, social institutions, customs, traditions, behaviors, and policies—on the other This definition encapsulates explicitly social science or sociotechnical research (Love & Cooper 2015) and research projects such as building monitoring or modelling work requiring the acknowledgement of human behaviour The discussion considers the limitations of the stated approach and other potential tools which can improve the transparency, reproducibility (where appropriate) and quality of research across the field
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