How well are open science practices implemented in industrial and organizational psychology and management?

Abstract

ABSTRACT To address the low reproducibility and replicability of research, Open Science Practices (OSPs) have been developed. Yet, despite increasing awareness of their potential benefits, there has been only little implementation. As journals can act as gatekeepers for scientific discoveries, a potential tendency not to mention OSPs on their websites may help to explain this implementation gap. Therefore, we examined the implementation of OSPs and potential barriers in industrial and organizational psychology and management (IOP/management) journals. Study 1 examined whether and how N = 257 journal websites referred to OSPs. We found that most journals did not mention OSPs. Specifically, only two (1.0%), five (2.5%), and 14 (6.9%) IOP/management journals mentioned preregistration, registered reports, and explicitly welcomed replications, respectively. Study 2 investigated perceived barriers to implementing OSPs with a survey among editors of the IOP/management journals from Study 1. Among the 40 responding editors, 14, 10, and five attributed the lacking implementation of OSPs to a lesser suitability of OSPs for qualitative research, missing authority, and missing familiarity with OSPs, respectively. Based on our findings, the implementation gap could be mitigated by developing new and refining extant OSPs, starting bottom-up initiatives (e.g., researchers directly contacting publishers), and increasing the availability of information on OSPs.