Bridging Feminist Psychology and Open Science: Feminist Tools and Shared Values Inform Best Practices for Science Reform

Abstract

Feminist researchers have long embraced the challenging, dismantling, and reimagining of psychology, though their contributions to transforming psychological science remain largely overlooked in the mainstream open science movement. In this article, we reconcile feminist psychology and open science. We propose that feminist theory can be leveraged to address central questions of the open science movement, and the potential for methodological synergy is promising. We signal the availability of feminist scholarship that can augment aspects of open science discourse. We also review the most compelling strategies for open science that can be harnessed by academic feminist psychologists. Drawing upon best practices in feminist psychology and open science, we address the following: generalizability (what are the contextual boundaries of results?), representation (who is included in research?), reflexivity (how can researchers reflect on who they are?), collaboration (are collaborative goals met within feminist psychology?), and dissemination (how should we give science away?). Throughout each section, we recommend using feminist tools when engaging with open science, and we recommend some open science practices for conducting research with feminist goals.

Understanding Sexual Assault Survivors’ Perspectives on Archiving Qualitative Data: Implications for Feminist Approaches to Open Science

“…Survivors wanted their data used to help change policies regarding untested SAKs, train the police in trauma-informed investigation techniques, and build more supportive programs for survivors. This vision is consistent with the notion of “giving psychology away” for the public good, which has been a key theme among feminist proponents of open science practices (Gervais et al, 2021; Matsick et al, 2021). Some survivors specifically called on the research community to be more engaged in translating their findings into action (Theme 3).…”

A new path: Why we need critical approaches to cognitive and psychological sciences.

“…In the last 20 years, scholars have made significant progress in addressing a range of concerns about the history of how our work has come to be and its potential future trajectories. This wide range of concerns includes, but is not limited to, open science (Matsick et al, 2021), replicability (Irvine, 2021), theoretical foundations (Eronen & Bringmann, 2021), scientific racism (Winston, 2020), disability frameworks (Henner & Robinson, 2021), homogeneous participant samples (Apicella et al, 2020), and deficit models (Kolluri & Tichavakunda, 2022). Given that a wide range of psychological and cognitive scientists have increasingly been critical of the state of our sciences, the time is right to bring this work together to articulate a broad framework that helps us make good on promises to improve how science is done.…”

Inclusive, open, and reproducible developmental science

“…Indeed, Conry-Murray and Silverstein highlight the multifaceted role of diversity in shaping the values of psychological science and how research in psychology can and should be conducted (Conry-Murray & Silverstein, 2022). Matsick and colleagues propose that viewing open science through a feminist psychology lens can help expand our understanding of issues around generalizability, representation, reflexivity, collaboration, and dissemination (Matsick et al, 2021). This is perhaps in part a response to an observation that open science has carried some exclusive connotations that serves to marginalize and exclude certain voices, with women in psychology often marginalized in so-called open scholarly dialogue (Murphy et al, 2020;Whitaker & Guest, 2020).…”