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Understanding experiments and research practices for reproducibility: an exploratory study

Scientific experiments and research practices vary across disciplines. The research practices followed by scientists in each domain play an essential role in the understandability and reproducibility of results. The “Reproducibility Crisis”, where researchers find difficulty in reproducing published...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Samuel, Sheeba, König-Ries, Birgitta
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8067906/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33976964
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11140
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author Samuel, Sheeba
König-Ries, Birgitta
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König-Ries, Birgitta
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description Scientific experiments and research practices vary across disciplines. The research practices followed by scientists in each domain play an essential role in the understandability and reproducibility of results. The “Reproducibility Crisis”, where researchers find difficulty in reproducing published results, is currently faced by several disciplines. To understand the underlying problem in the context of the reproducibility crisis, it is important to first know the different research practices followed in their domain and the factors that hinder reproducibility. We performed an exploratory study by conducting a survey addressed to researchers representing a range of disciplines to understand scientific experiments and research practices for reproducibility. The survey findings identify a reproducibility crisis and a strong need for sharing data, code, methods, steps, and negative and positive results. Insufficient metadata, lack of publicly available data, and incomplete information in study methods are considered to be the main reasons for poor reproducibility. The survey results also address a wide number of research questions on the reproducibility of scientific results. Based on the results of our explorative study and supported by the existing published literature, we offer general recommendations that could help the scientific community to understand, reproduce, and reuse experimental data and results in the research data lifecycle.
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spelling pubmed-80679062021-05-10 Understanding experiments and research practices for reproducibility: an exploratory study Samuel, Sheeba König-Ries, Birgitta PeerJ Science Policy Scientific experiments and research practices vary across disciplines. The research practices followed by scientists in each domain play an essential role in the understandability and reproducibility of results. The “Reproducibility Crisis”, where researchers find difficulty in reproducing published results, is currently faced by several disciplines. To understand the underlying problem in the context of the reproducibility crisis, it is important to first know the different research practices followed in their domain and the factors that hinder reproducibility. We performed an exploratory study by conducting a survey addressed to researchers representing a range of disciplines to understand scientific experiments and research practices for reproducibility. The survey findings identify a reproducibility crisis and a strong need for sharing data, code, methods, steps, and negative and positive results. Insufficient metadata, lack of publicly available data, and incomplete information in study methods are considered to be the main reasons for poor reproducibility. The survey results also address a wide number of research questions on the reproducibility of scientific results. Based on the results of our explorative study and supported by the existing published literature, we offer general recommendations that could help the scientific community to understand, reproduce, and reuse experimental data and results in the research data lifecycle. PeerJ Inc. 2021-04-21 /pmc/articles/PMC8067906/ /pubmed/33976964 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11140 Text en ©2021 Samuel 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, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Science Policy
Samuel, Sheeba
König-Ries, Birgitta
Understanding experiments and research practices for reproducibility: an exploratory study
title Understanding experiments and research practices for reproducibility: an exploratory study
title_full Understanding experiments and research practices for reproducibility: an exploratory study
title_fullStr Understanding experiments and research practices for reproducibility: an exploratory study
title_full_unstemmed Understanding experiments and research practices for reproducibility: an exploratory study
title_short Understanding experiments and research practices for reproducibility: an exploratory study
title_sort understanding experiments and research practices for reproducibility: an exploratory study
topic Science Policy
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8067906/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33976964
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11140
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