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Care to share? Experimental evidence on code sharing behavior in the social sciences

Transparency and peer control are cornerstones of good scientific practice and entail the replication and reproduction of findings. The feasibility of replications, however, hinges on the premise that original researchers make their data and research code publicly available. This applies in particul...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Krähmer, Daniel, Schächtele, Laura, Schneck, Andreas
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10406284/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37549146
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289380
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author Krähmer, Daniel
Schächtele, Laura
Schneck, Andreas
author_facet Krähmer, Daniel
Schächtele, Laura
Schneck, Andreas
author_sort Krähmer, Daniel
collection PubMed
description Transparency and peer control are cornerstones of good scientific practice and entail the replication and reproduction of findings. The feasibility of replications, however, hinges on the premise that original researchers make their data and research code publicly available. This applies in particular to large-N observational studies, where analysis code is complex and may involve several ambiguous analytical decisions. To investigate which specific factors influence researchers’ code sharing behavior upon request, we emailed code requests to 1,206 authors who published research articles based on data from the European Social Survey between 2015 and 2020. In this preregistered multifactorial field experiment, we randomly varied three aspects of our code request’s wording in a 2x4x2 factorial design: the overall framing of our request (enhancement of social science research, response to replication crisis), the appeal why researchers should share their code (FAIR principles, academic altruism, prospect of citation, no information), and the perceived effort associated with code sharing (no code cleaning required, no information). Overall, 37.5% of successfully contacted authors supplied their analysis code. Of our experimental treatments, only framing affected researchers’ code sharing behavior, though in the opposite direction we expected: Scientists who received the negative wording alluding to the replication crisis were more likely to share their research code. Taken together, our results highlight that the availability of research code will hardly be enhanced by small-scale individual interventions but instead requires large-scale institutional norms.
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spelling pubmed-104062842023-08-08 Care to share? Experimental evidence on code sharing behavior in the social sciences Krähmer, Daniel Schächtele, Laura Schneck, Andreas PLoS One Research Article Transparency and peer control are cornerstones of good scientific practice and entail the replication and reproduction of findings. The feasibility of replications, however, hinges on the premise that original researchers make their data and research code publicly available. This applies in particular to large-N observational studies, where analysis code is complex and may involve several ambiguous analytical decisions. To investigate which specific factors influence researchers’ code sharing behavior upon request, we emailed code requests to 1,206 authors who published research articles based on data from the European Social Survey between 2015 and 2020. In this preregistered multifactorial field experiment, we randomly varied three aspects of our code request’s wording in a 2x4x2 factorial design: the overall framing of our request (enhancement of social science research, response to replication crisis), the appeal why researchers should share their code (FAIR principles, academic altruism, prospect of citation, no information), and the perceived effort associated with code sharing (no code cleaning required, no information). Overall, 37.5% of successfully contacted authors supplied their analysis code. Of our experimental treatments, only framing affected researchers’ code sharing behavior, though in the opposite direction we expected: Scientists who received the negative wording alluding to the replication crisis were more likely to share their research code. Taken together, our results highlight that the availability of research code will hardly be enhanced by small-scale individual interventions but instead requires large-scale institutional norms. Public Library of Science 2023-08-07 /pmc/articles/PMC10406284/ /pubmed/37549146 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289380 Text en © 2023 Krähmer et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Krähmer, Daniel
Schächtele, Laura
Schneck, Andreas
Care to share? Experimental evidence on code sharing behavior in the social sciences
title Care to share? Experimental evidence on code sharing behavior in the social sciences
title_full Care to share? Experimental evidence on code sharing behavior in the social sciences
title_fullStr Care to share? Experimental evidence on code sharing behavior in the social sciences
title_full_unstemmed Care to share? Experimental evidence on code sharing behavior in the social sciences
title_short Care to share? Experimental evidence on code sharing behavior in the social sciences
title_sort care to share? experimental evidence on code sharing behavior in the social sciences
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10406284/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37549146
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289380
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