Reproducibility – a seemingly elegant and clear-cut concept in isolation – lies at the heart of a tangled web of incentives, career structures and publication practices.
But in its recent report, the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee has a rich set of proposals that aim to untangle this web.
While some of the report’s recommendations lack specificity, a number of them are unusually granular, from a meaty set of objectives and processes for the UKRI Committee on Research Integrity to a multipronged approach to assess and fund statistical input into research and statisticians’ career paths. The committee hasn’t shied away from getting into the nitty-gritty in this inquiry.
A prominent theme of the report is the importance of research transparency. The committee even goes so far as to say, “we use the term reproducibility to broadly refer to the transparency and quality of research.”
