Plea for a Simple But Radical Change in Scientific Publication: To Improve Openness, Reliability, and Reproducibility, Let's Deposit and Validate Our Results before Writing Articles.

Abstract

Limited reproducibility and validity are major sources of concern in biology and other fields of science. Their origins have been extensively described and include material variability, incomplete materials and methods report, results selection, defective experimental design, lack of power, inappropriate statistics, overinterpretation, and reluctance to publish negative results. Promoting complete and accurate communication of positive and negative results is a major objective. Multiple steps in this direction are taken, but they are not sufficient and the general construction of articles has not been questioned. I propose here a simple change with a potentially strong positive impact. First, when they complete a substantial coherent set of experiments, scientists deposit their positive or negative results in a database [“deposited results,” (DRs)], including detailed materials, methods, raw data, analysis, and processed results. The DRs are technically reviewed and validated as “validated DRs” (vDRs) or rejected until satisfactory. vDR databases are open (after an embargo period if requested by the authors) and can later be updated by them or others with replications or replication failures, providing a comprehensive active log of scientific data. Articles, in this proposal, are then built as they currently are, except they only include vDRs as strong and open building blocks. I argue that this approach would increase the transparency, reproducibility, and reliability of scientific publications and have additional advantages including accurate author credit, better material for evaluation, exhaustive scientific archiving, and increased openness of life science material.