Abstract
Background: "Open science" is an umbrella term describing various aspects of transparent and open science practices. The adoption of practices at different levels of the scientific process (e.g., individual researchers, laboratories, institutions) has been rapidly changing the scientific research landscape in the past years, but their uptake differs from discipline to discipline. Here, we asked to what extent journals in the field of sleep research and chronobiology encourage or even require following transparent and open science principles in their author guidelines. Methods: We scored the author guidelines of a comprehensive set of 28 sleep and chronobiology journals, including the major outlets in the field, using the standardised Transparency and Openness (TOP) Factor. This instrument rates the extent to which journals encourage or require following various aspects of open science, including data citation, data transparency, analysis code transparency, materials transparency, design and analysis guidelines, study pre-registration, analysis plan pre-registration, replication, registered reports, and the use of open science badges. Results: Across the 28 journals, we find low values on the TOP Factor (median [25th, 75th percentile] 2.5 [1, 3], min. 0, max. 9, out of a total possible score of 28) in sleep research and chronobiology journals. Conclusions: Our findings suggest an opportunity for sleep research and chronobiology journals to further support the recent developments in transparent and open science by implementing transparency and openness principles in their guidelines and making adherence to them mandatory.
Highlights
During the last years, the open science movement gained increasing popularity and is rapidly changing the way science is done, especially among early career researchers striving to improve scientific practice and overcome deficits in the current scientific status quo[1,2]
It is still largely up to individual researchers and research groups to decide to what extent they want to engage in open science practices and incentives that may promote open science are rare
Across the 28 journals we examined, we find a total median Transparency and Openness (TOP)
Summary
The open science movement gained increasing popularity and is rapidly changing the way science is done, especially among early career researchers striving to improve scientific practice and overcome deficits in the current scientific status quo[1,2]. The term "open science" is relatively ill-defined and includes a range of different methods, tools, platforms, and practices that are geared to improving the quality of science through transparency[3]. Journals as the main outlets for archival scientific dissemination can support the movement and offer ways to make the scientific process more open, reproducible, and emphasise good scientific practice. They may even speed up the process by requiring authors to adhere to open science standards. To what extent do journals in the fields of sleep and chronobiology encourage or even require following the standards of open science?
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