The Center for Open Science is a
non-profit technology organization based in
Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen ...
with a mission to "increase the openness, integrity, and
reproducibility
Reproducibility, also known as replicability and repeatability, is a major principle underpinning the scientific method. For the findings of a study to be reproducible means that results obtained by an experiment or an observational study or in ...
of scientific research."
Brian Nosek
Brian Arthur Nosek is an American social-cognitive psychologist, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and the co-founder and director of the Center for Open Science. He also co-founded the Society for the Improvement of Psycholog ...
and Jeffrey Spies founded the organization in January 2013, funded mainly by the
Laura and John Arnold Foundation
Arnold Ventures LLC (formerly known as The Laura and John Arnold Foundation) is focused on evidence-based giving in a wide range of categories including: criminal justice, education, health care, and public finance. The organization was founded by ...
and others.
The organization began with work in reproducibility of
psychology research, with the large-scale initiative
Reproducibility Project: Psychology. A second reproducibility project for
cancer biology research has also been started through a partnership with
Science Exchange. In March 2017, the Center published a detailed strategic plan. Brian Nosek posted a letter outlining the history of the Center and future directions.
Open Science Framework
Reproducibility project
The Open Science Framework (OSF) is an
open source software project that facilitates open collaboration in science research. The framework was initially used to work on a project in the reproducibility of psychology research, but has subsequently become multidisciplinary. The current reproducibility aspect of the project is a crowdsourced empirical investigation of the reproducibility of a variety of studies from psychological literature, sampling from three major journals: ''
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
The ''Journal of Personality and Social Psychology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Psychological Association that was established in 1965. It covers the fields of social and personality psychology. The ed ...
'', ''
Psychological Science'', and ''
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition''. Scientists from all over the world volunteer to replicate a study of their choosing from these journals, and follow a structured protocol for designing and conducting a high-powered replication of the key effect. The results were published in 2015.
Preprints
In 2016, OSF started three new
preprint
In academic publishing, a preprint is a version of a scholarly or scientific paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly or scientific journal. The preprint may be available, often as a non-typeset versio ...
services:
engrXiv,
SocArXiv
SocArXiv is an online paper server for the social sciences founded by sociologist Philip N. Cohen in partnership with the non-profit Center for Open Science. It is an open archive based on the ArXiv preprint server model used for the natural sc ...
, and
PsyArXiv. It subsequently opened its own preprint server in 2017, OSF Preprints. Its unified search function includes preprints from OSF Preprints, alongside those from other servers such as
Preprints.org,
Thesis Commons
A thesis ( : theses), or dissertation (abbreviated diss.), is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings.International Standard ISO 7144: ...
,
PeerJ
''PeerJ'' is an open access peer-reviewed scientific mega journal covering research in the biological and medical sciences. It is published by a company of the same name that was co-founded by CEO Jason Hoyt (formerly at Mendeley) and publisher ...
, and multiple
ArXiv
arXiv (pronounced "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of s ...
repositories.
See also
*
List of preprint repositories
*
Metascience
*
Open science
*
Replication crisis
References
External links
*
Open Science Framework(OSF)
{{Authority control
Scholarly communication
Open science
Collaborative software
Non-profit organizations based in Charlottesville, Virginia
2013 establishments in Virginia
Metascience-related organizations