“Because It Is the Right Thing to Do”: Taking Stock of the Peer Reviewers’ Openness Initiative

• Main Authors: Maike Dahrendorf, Tabea Hoffmann, Maximilian Mittenbühler, Sera Wiechert, Alexandra Sarafoglou, Dora Matzke, Eric-Jan Wagenmakers
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: European Federation of Psychology Students' Associations 2020-05-01
• Series: Journal of European Psychology Students
• Subjects: open science, data sharing, transparency, peer review, peer reviewers’ openness initiative, survey
• Online Access: https://jeps.efpsa.org/articles/506

<p>The Peer Reviewers’ Openness (PRO) Initiative promotes the sharing of data and code. PRO signatories pledge to provide a full review only for manuscripts that publicly share data and code, or include a justification why sharing is not possible. Since the punitive element of this approach attracted criticism, we conducted a survey to assess signatories’ experiences with PRO. Contrary to the criticism, the reported experiences were predominantly positive, and 92% (117/127) of the signatories indicated that they would sign the initiative again today. Only 19 out of 127 respondents (15%) experienced negative reactions. Almost 50 respondents suggested ways in which PRO could be improved. We conclude that, from the signatories’ perspective, the benefits of the PRO initiative outweigh its drawbacks.</p>