Apply now for the Research Transparency and Reproducibility Training (RT2)

Applications are open for RT2 2021!
Read on for more information and other exciting news from our community.

Join our upcoming Research Transparency and Reproducibility Training, online this year, to learn about tools and practices for transparent and reproducible social science research! Sessions will run 8:00-11:30 am PT on the days noted. Check out the agenda and apply by July 18 for a tuition waiver.

Open science education news and resources from Catalysts

The Pre-doctoral Research in Economics workshop on career paths and open science, organized by Jun Wong, Coly Elhai, and Dominic Russel, hosted over 250 students in June (find video recordings here). Esra Ataman, Ozan Can Çağlar, and Bilal Kırkıcı developed a new open science module for language research courses (read more on our blog).

Using Open Policy Analysis to fight misinformation

BITSS Scientist Fernando Hoces de la Guardia explains in a recent blog post how we might stem the tide of "alternative facts" and enable consensus in polarized policy debates through Open Policy Analysis, which brings open science tools to the policy analysis world.

Benefits of the Social Science Prediction Platform (SSPP)

Interested in integrating forecasting into your research? Watch this video to learn how the SSPP can help reduce publication and hindsight bias, improve research designs, and streamline survey distribution. And read our blog on the platform's emerging benefits a year after its launch.

Opportunities & Events

Jul. 12: Submit registered report abstracts for the German Longitudinal Election Study Open Science Challenge.

Jul. 12-14: Register for the inaugural conference of the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (SORTEE).

Jul. 21: Register for the United Nations 2nd Open Science Conference. This year's theme is the role of open science in the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change.

Aug. 1: Register for early-bird tickets to Metascience 2021, to be held online September 16-18 and 23-25.

Aug. 25: Register for the Summer Seminar on Research Integrity hosted by the Netherlands Research Integrity Network (NRIN) and the Abraham Kuyper Center. Research abstracts are due July 31.

Sep. 15: Submit papers for the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education's special issue on teaching reproducibility and responsible workflow.

Ongoing: The UK Reproducibility Network is offering incentives for researchers who are willing to share their experiences with open research via short videos.

Ongoing: Help compile a list of open science tools and practices and earn cryptocurrency rewards as part of 1729's Crypto Sci-Hub challenge.

Ongoing: Sign a petition organized by Project Free Our Knowledge, asking editors of ecology and evolutionary biology journals to adopt the registered reports format.

Past: Find slides and other materials from the "Prediction, Registration, and Replication of Scientific Findings" workshop hosted by the LMU Center for Advanced Studies.

New Open Science Resources

Valentin Danchev released "Reproducible Data Science", a textbook that uses real-world COVID-19 data to teach open, reproducible, and ethical data analysis using Python.

Kristoffer Bjärkefur and colleagues published "Development Researc h in Practice", a handbook on how to handle and analyze development data effectively, efficiently, and ethically. Register for the accompanying online course.

Use and contribute to the Open Research Calendar, which collates worldwide events related to open research.

Felix Schönbrodt shared slides for an introduction to open science which can be re-used and distributed under the CC BY license.

Check out our Resource Library to find useful tools, software, templates, and media for transparent and reproducible research. Let us know about useful resources that we should add!

Open for Predictions on the SSPP

The Social Science Prediction Platform enables researchers to collect and contribute forecasts about research results in a transparent and systematic way. These surveys are currently open for predictions (projects marked with "$" offer incentives):

The Long-Run Effects of a Program Aimed at Reducing Crime and Violence: Experimental Evidence from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Liberia ($) by Christopher Blattman, Sebastian Chaskel, Julian Jamison, and Margaret Sheridan.
Behavioral interventions and vaccination uptake by Pol Campos-Mercade, Armando Meier, Stephan Meier, Devin Pope, Florian Schneider, and Erik Wengström.
Beliefs About Public Spending and Efficient Expenditures in Public Procurement Officers by Pablo Celhay, Paul Gertler, Marcelo Olivares, and Raimundo Undurraga.

Visit the SSPP to see all projects and results from selected projects. Contact Nick Otis at support@socialscienceprediction.org for help getting started on your own project.

New on MetaArXiv

MetaArXiv is an inter-disciplinary preprint service, managed by BITSS, for work on research transparency and reproducibility, meta-analyses, and other meta-scientific work. See recently posted MetaArXiv preprints below.

Dominika Ehrenbergerova, Josef Bajzik, and Tomas Havranek conduct a meta-analysis on the effects of short-term interest rates on house prices and find that reported estimates are exaggerated due to publication bias.

Melissa Rethlefsen and colleagues share a protocol for an RCT to evaluate the effect of including librarians on the quality of search reporting and the risk of bias in systematic review searches.

Adeline Rosenberg and colleagues propose a standard for plain language summaries of peer-reviewed medical journal publications, which are intended to better inform and engage the stakeholders of such research.

If you're interested in community peer-review, submit your MetaArXiv preprints to PCI Meta-Research. Apply to present your work at a weekly webinar at the METRICS International Forum by submitting an expression of interest.

Spread the word through BITSS!

Interested in authoring a post on the BITSS blog or sharing an opportunity, event, or resource in this newsletter? Contact Aleksandar Bogdanoski.

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The Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) works to strengthen research integrity by promoting transparency, reproducibility, and openness across the social sciences. BITSS is an initiative of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), headquartered at UC Berkeley.

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