An Open Science Peer Review Oath

Abstract

One of the foundations of the scientific method is to be able to reproduce experiments and corroborate the results of research that has been done before. However, with the increasing complexities of new technologies and techniques, coupled with the specialisation of experiments, reproducing research findings has become a growing challenge. Clearly, scientific methods must be conveyed succinctly, and with clarity and rigour, in order for research to be reproducible. Here, we propose steps to help increase the transparency of the scientific method and the reproducibility of research results: specifically, we introduce a peer-review oath and accompanying manifesto. These have been designed to offer guidelines to enable reviewers (with the minimum friction or bias) to follow and apply open science principles, and support the ideas of transparency, reproducibility and ultimately greater societal impact. Introducing the oath and manifesto at the stage of peer review will help to check that the research being published includes everything that other researchers would need to successfully repeat the work. Peer review is the lynchpin of the Open science and the future of peer-review Science builds on itself. New knowledge is gained in the context of the enlightenment of earlier discoveries and, for the foundations to remain solid each discovery must be accurate and reliable. But science in the real world is messy, and advances haltingly and piecewise. Often, prior information is incomplete, so conclusions drawn need revising in the light of new, later evidence. This means that self-reference and self-checking are cornerstones of the scientific method; and, having reported our experiments, it is vital that readers are able to repeat them and understand how we reached our conclusions. Various studies have shown that, for a study to be successfully reproduced, information presented in the literature is often inadequate and the underlying data not readily available 1 -a significant drawback. Several commentators have concluded that weaknesses in the way that research investigations are currently conducted, and how their results are disseminated via article publication have become detrimental to the scientific process [2][3][4][5][6][7] . As the technological sophistication of science increases, and the equipment used becomes more specialised, the data generated are harder to represent in traditional media, and reporting how experiments were performed so that independent researchers can repeat them becomes progressively harder.Open science is a movement that seeks to ensure that the results and the data of scientific research are, and continue to be, available to all. One way in which reproducibility issues can be tackled is through the use of open-science and open-data practices 8,9 . As attendees of the AllBio: Open Science & Reproducibility Best Practice Workshop, we discussed how the problem of keeping science transparent and reproducible in an increasingly technologydriven, and specialised, domain could be addre...

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