Center for Open Science
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| Center for Open Science | |
|---|---|
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| Name | Center for Open Science |
| Formation | 2013 |
| Type | Nonprofit organization |
| Headquarters | Charlottesville, Virginia |
| Leader title | CEO |
| Leader name | Brian Nosek |
Center for Open Science is a nonprofit organization founded in 2013 dedicated to improving openness, integrity, and reproducibility in scientific research. It develops infrastructure, advocacy, and community initiatives aimed at transforming practices across biomedical, psychological, social, and physical sciences. The organization works with universities, publishers, funders, and societies to promote transparency and verification in research workflows.
History
The organization was launched in 2013 amid debates sparked by replication issues highlighted in psychology and biomedical literature, following controversies associated with high-profile publications such as the replication efforts around the Open Science Collaboration and debates involving researchers like Diederik Stapel, Brian Nosek, and John Ioannidis. Early collaborations drew attention from institutions including the University of Virginia, the National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. In subsequent years the group partnered with journals such as PLOS, Nature, and Science, and with projects linked to the Reproducibility Project in psychology, the Retraction Watch community, and initiatives involving the Royal Society, the American Psychological Association, and the Committee on Publication Ethics.
Mission and Activities
The organization's stated mission centers on increasing openness, integrity, and reproducibility in research across fields represented by stakeholders such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Neuroscience, the Association for Psychological Science, and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Activities include developing infrastructure for preregistration and data sharing used by researchers from institutions like Harvard University, Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and University College London. The group engages with funders such as the Wellcome Trust, the National Science Foundation, and the European Commission, and with publishers including Elsevier, Springer Nature, and Wiley, to integrate transparency standards into grant and publication workflows. Training and outreach have involved partners like the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, the Cochrane Collaboration, and academic consortia at Johns Hopkins University and Yale University.
Projects and Tools
Key platforms and initiatives include the Open Science Framework, which interoperates with services and standards associated with GitHub, ORCID, CrossRef, Dryad, Figshare, and Zenodo. The organization has developed preregistration templates used in registries analogous to ClinicalTrials.gov, the American Economic Association registry, and the AsPredicted templates promoted by the Society for Research in Child Development. Other tools and programs link to reproducibility efforts exemplified by the ReproZip project, Jupyter notebooks popularized at Project Jupyter, the Data Carpentry and Software Carpentry training networks, and metadata initiatives like DataCite. Collaborations have also involved the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Harvard, and methodological resources influenced by work from the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Research Data Alliance.
Governance and Funding
Governance structures include a board and executive leadership connected with academic figures and advisors who have affiliations with institutions such as the University of Virginia, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Oxford, and the Max Planck Society. Funding sources have included philanthropic foundations like the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and grants from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The organization has received in-kind partnerships with publishers and technology firms including Elsevier, Wiley, and Amazon Web Services and collaborates with consortia like the Association of American Universities and the European University Association.
Impact and Criticism
Supporters cite influence on journal policies at publishers including PLOS, Springer Nature, and the American Psychological Association, and on funder policies at organizations such as the Wellcome Trust and the National Institutes of Health, as evidence of impact on research norms in domains connected to psychology, neuroscience, clinical trials, and economics. Empirical follow-ups reference replication projects including the Reproducibility Project: Psychology and meta-research by groups at Columbia University, Stanford University, and the University of Toronto. Critics and commentators from outlets and initiatives such as Retraction Watch, individual academics at Harvard and Yale, and commentators associated with debates around preregistration and registered reports have raised concerns about implementation, sustainability, incentive alignment, and the balance between openness and privacy or proprietary concerns noted in contexts like ClinicalTrials.gov and industry-sponsored research. Debates have referenced methodological disputes also seen in controversies involving figures and institutions like Diederik Stapel, John Ioannidis, and the reproducibility discussions catalyzed at conferences hosted by the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.