The behavioral, social, and cognitive sciences are in the midst of an intensive debate about the replicability of their empirical findings. Shaken by the results of many replication projects that have been conducted in recent years, scholars have begun discussing about replication.
So far, most of these discussions have been based on ad-hoc arguments. Thus, a concerted, integrative, and interdisciplinary meta-scientific research programme is needed to systematically scrutinize arguments. “META-REP - A meta-scientific program to analyze and optimize replicability in the behavioral, social, and cognitive sciences” is such a program.
ZPID is infrastructure partner in the programme funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG) and led by Prof. Dr. Mario Gollwitzer. The research support institution will provide a scientific groupware platform which will allow all research groups to easily share and discuss all kinds of research-related digital objects between the partners.
Following an accepted publication, the research outcomes and the documentation of all processes yielding these outcomes will be made available long-term as downloadable, annotated files in PsychArchives, ZPID’s certified and GDPR-compliant repository. Sensitive research data, usually raw data, will also be stored in the same repository and made available through a secure access procedure for scientists.
All participating projects will be encouraged to preregister their hypotheses, methods, and
analysis plans and to document and share their research data and materials according to the DFG guidelines. “The goal is to render all digital research objects generated in META-REP projects reproducible, findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable”, says ZPID director Prof. Dr. Michael Bosnjak. “The diverse data collection from this programme, to be provided long-term for re-usability via PsychArchives, will be a rich source for secondary data analysis that might answer substantive as well as meta-scientific research questions that go beyond the primary project goals.”
META-REP is one of 14 new consortia, funded by the German Research Foundation. Priority Programmes are designed to investigate the scientific foundations of particularly current or emerging research areas. All programmes have a strong interdisciplinary orientation and are characterized by the use of innovative methods. The funding is granted for a maximum of six years. Up to 30 individual projects are possible for each priority programme.
The META-REP proposal can be found here: http://dx.doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.3010
Further information: https://leibniz-psychology.org/metarep/.