What are Open Science Practices and Why do they Matter? Inside JABA 21

The Behavioral Observations Podcast with Matt Cicoria

Dr. Matt Tincani joins Dr. John Borrero and me for the 21st (can you believe it!?!?) installment of the Inside JABA Series on Behavioral Observations.

From a research perspective, this Inside JABA episode is by far our most wonkiest one to date. By that I mean we take a deep dive into the area of Open Science Practices.

If you're not familiar with the Open Science movement, Matt walks us through the basics. In doing so, we review the lead paper in the fall 2024 issue of JABA that he co-wrote with Drs. Shawn Gilroy and Art Dowdy (see Tincani, Gilroy, and Dowdy, 2024).

Of the several Open Science Practices, this paper - and by extension, this episode - focuses on Preregistration. According to Tincani and colleagues, "preregistration entails outlining a research protocol and specifying the study methods and plans for analysis, which are then archived publicly in a repository before conducting the study" (see p. 4).

The point of doing this, amongst others, is to increase transparency and reduce criticisms of questionable research practices in Behavior-Analytic research, such as the file drawer effect, dropping participants from analyses, and so on.

While these aims sound laudable, when reading this paper, my inner skeptic began formulating a handful of objections to preregistration, such as increasing barriers to conducting research by adding additional steps, "boxing in" the work of researchers to the point if inflexibility, and so on. Both in the paper and on this podcast, Matt walks through these common objections, so if you too are skeptical, give this episode a listen and see if Matt's treatment of these resonate with you.

Here are a few resources mentioned in the episode:

• Tincani, Gilroy, and Dowdy (2024). Extensions of open science for applied behavior analysis: Preregistration for single-case experimental designs.

• Tincani and Travers (2019). Replication Research, Publication Bias, and Applied Behavior Analysis.

• Subscribe to JABA here.

• Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science.

• Retraction Watch.

• Rick Kubina, Session 39.

• Kubina et al. (2017). A Critical Review of Line Graphs in Behavior Analytic Journals.