Replication and Data Research Transparency

APSA has long been attentive to and concerned about replication and data research transparency. We have made available two large symposia, both published in PS, concerning replication and data research transparency. The first symposium, published in 1995, includes Gary King’s often cited article “Replication, Replication.”  The second symposium, published in 2014, is Openness in Social Science Research, and includes many articles on this topic as well as replication.

Since 2011, APSA has been engaged in a multilayered dialogue on Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT). As part of this conversation, APSA Council approved the formation of an Ad Hoc Committee on Data Access and Research Transparency (DART) to discuss openness in political science. In 2012 the APSA council adopted new standards on data access and research transparency, under the guidelines for individual researchers in the APSA guide to professional ethics, rights and freedoms. In March 2015, APSA, the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan, and the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry and its Qualitative Data Repository at Syracuse University, convened a one-day workshop in Washington, DC on research transparency for disciplinary, region-specific, and topic-specific associations. The workshop addressed the debate concerning research transparency, its benefits, and its implications and considered the role that such associations can play in supporting and encouraging research transparency.