Open Access and Research Reproducibility in Biomedical Sciences

Abstract

Reproducibility-enhancing practices of open access journals in biomedical sciences are investigated. Based on transparency and openness promotion guidelines and relevant reporting requirements by institutions that are in the forefront of advancing reproducibility research, eight standards were used to evaluate 27 biomedical journals to 1) determine the extent to which these journals address reproducibility, 2) identify specific policy themes required, and 3) understand overall infrastructure promoted by the journals to deposit, archive, share, and discover research assets. The results show that almost all the 27 journals required authors to address six of the eight standards when preparing and submitting their research. Two standards that were not frequently addressed are preregistration of the study and preregistration of analysis plans. ‘Data availability' policy is the most recurring theme across all journals. The infrastructure promoted to manage the overall scholarly communication workflow range from data, code, software repositories, protocol registration, to funding registry.