Exploring enablers and barriers to implementing the Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines: a theory-based survey of journal editors

Abstract

The Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines provide a framework to help journals develop open science policies. Theories of behaviour change can guide understanding of why journals do (not) implement open science policies and the development of interventions to improve these policies. In this study, we used the Theoretical Domains Framework to survey 88 journal editors on their capability, opportunity and motivation to implement TOP. Likert-scale questions assessed editor support for TOP, and enablers and barriers to implementing TOP. A qualitative question asked editors to provide reflections on their ratings. Most participating editors supported adopting TOP at their journal (71%) and perceived other editors in their discipline to support adopting TOP (57%). Most editors (93%) agreed their roles include maintaining policies that reflect current best practices. However, most editors (74%) did not see implementing TOP as a high priority compared with other editorial responsibilities. Qualitative responses expressed structural barriers to implementing TOP (e.g. lack of time, resources and authority to implement changes) and varying support for TOP depending on study type, open science standard, and level of implementation. We discuss how these findings could inform the development of theoretically guided interventions to increase open science policies, procedures and practices.

Evaluating Implementation of the Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines: Reliability of Instruments to Assess Journal Policies, Procedures, and Practices

“…TOP aims to align scientific ideals with research practice. Unfortunately, it has not been implemented widely by journals in the behavioral, social, and health sciences (Grant et al, 2022; Mayo-Wilson, Grant, & Supplee, 2022) despite journal endorsement and widespread community support (Naaman et al, 2023). We conclude that revising TOP might improve its interpretability and use.…”

“…One describes the level of TOP uptake at the journals included in our study (Grant et al, 2022). The other describes a survey of journal editors that aimed to identify facilitators and barriers to uptake (Naaman et al, 2023).…”

“…We published the protocol for this study in a peerreviewed journal (Mayo-Wilson et al, 2021). Readers can access the code and documentation (Kianersi et al, 2022b), materials (Kianersi et al, 2022a), deidentified data (Mayo-Wilson, Naaman, et al, 2023), and other resources at https://osf .io/txyr3/. In the Supplemental Material available online, we summarized descriptive findings on journal publishers and submission systems, our methods for interpreting the magnitude of IRR estimates, comparisons of our journal ratings with those posted on the Center for Open Science website, and our journal-rating timelines.…”

Investigating the Nature of Open Science Practices Across Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Medicine Journals: An Audit

“…For example, if data citation was mandated as a condition of publication, peer reviewers may not want to take additional time to ensure articles are published in accordance with the journal’s open science practices. Publishers can potentially alleviate this barrier by changing the default settings in popular manuscript submission systems to allow for more uniform data input in line with TOP (e.g., a mandatory field requiring input of a data availability statement) [51]. Such changes have been attempted in a study performed by Giofrè et al that suggests that journal-specific submission guidelines could promote positive alterations in the practices of authors [15].…”

Investigating the nature of open science practices across complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine journals: An audit

“…Given the potential benefits of open science practices for CAIM research, it is important to consider barriers to its usage and ways to overcome them. A potential reason for low TOP scores includes a low incentive for journals to implement the usage of open science practices due to the added time and resources to mandate the change [49]. Moreover, support from editors is crucial for promoting open science practices reforms within journals.…”