An editor's guide to Open Science Badges

What are Open Science Badges?

Open Science Badges (OSB) were designed by the Center for Open Science to acknowledge and encourage open science practices. They are offered as incentives for researchers to share data, materials, or to preregister their research. The badges are a visual signal for readers, indicating that the content of the study is available in perpetuity.

Three Open Science Badges are currently available, subject to research meeting various assessment criteria:

Why offer Open Science Badges?

There are several key benefits to offering Open Science Badges on your journal. Firstly, adopting the badges demonstrates a commitment to supporting open research practices, which authors across a range of subjects are increasingly expecting from the journals they submit to.

Secondly, it has been shown that implementing these badges can dramatically increase the rate of data sharing. A different study, conducted by the Center for Open Science, suggested that offering Open Science Badges is associated with better open science practices.

Thirdly, data sharing presents an opportunity to connect readers to the larger research agenda. As Jon Grahe, Managing Executive Editor of The Journal of Social Psychology, says:

“If data are published on a project that also directs readers to a main page where other study data sets are kept, the research can have even greater impact. By sharing the data, we invite readers to challenge the authors’ assertions directly. This has a benefit of pressing authors to make sure their data and analyses are correct. More than once, an author earning an open data badge has contacted me and alerted me to a data error of some sort as they prepared to make their research open. If not for the data sharing process, these errors would never be found or would have been found post publication.”

You can find out more about how The Journal of Social Psychology rewards its authors with Open Science Badges on the Peer Support Zone.

Before adopting Open Science Badges

There are several things to be aware of before adopting the program.

The journal needs to use an online peer review system, such as ScholarOne Manuscripts or Editorial Manager.

Adopting Open Science Badges does require some additional work for editors, so it is important to consider if there is capacity to accommodate this. For example, each application for a badge will require adding some extra steps into the workflow, such as:

• Confirming that the author’s link leads to the data, materials, or registration on a public, open access repository
• Confirming that the linked materials are related to the author’s submission
• Completion of Section B of the ‘Author Disclosure Form‘

If after discussion with your Portfolio Manager, you decide to implement Open Science Badges on your journal, the following changes will be made:

• Template emails on your submission site will be amended to include details of the program
• Information will be added to the journal’s header on Taylor & Francis Online to signpost to readers that the journal supports the program – you can see a live example of this here
• Information will be added to the Instructions for Authors page

What’s the process for adding badges to an article?

1. The author uploads the ‘Author Disclosure Form’ during the revision stage of peer review, or emails the form to the editorial office directly
2. The editor assess the submission and completes Section B of the ‘Author Disclosure Form’
3. The typesetter locates the appropriate display text from the ‘Author Disclosure Form’
4. The typesetter adds the appropriate text and images to the Open Scholarship section of the manuscript

If you are interested in implementing the Open Science Badges program on your journal, please contact your Portfolio Manager at Taylor & Francis for more information.

What’s the author experience of applying for a badge?

Once a paper has been submitted to a journal supporting Open Science Badges, authors will go through the following steps:

1. The author receives an automatic notice through the journal’s online submission site, making them aware that the journal supports the Open Science Badges program and informing them that they will have the opportunity to apply for these badges later in the peer review process
2. At both revision and acceptance stages, authors will receive the ‘Author Disclosure Form’ through the online submission site. Please note that authors will be informed that only accepted papers are eligible to be awarded badges.
3. Authors wishing to apply for badges will complete the form and upload to the peer review system, or email directly to the journal’s editorial office within 72 hours of acceptance (forms received after this 72 hour window cannot be processed).

Authors can find out more about Open Science Badges on Author Services.

What is the process for editors managing a journal which supports Open Science Badges?

When an editor or editorial office receives an application from an author, they will follow this process:

1. Check that the submission meets the badge criteria
2. Complete Section B of the ‘Author Disclosure Form’ – firstly by indicating which badge(s) has/have been awarded, and secondly by selecting the appropriate text to accompany the badge(s) on the published manuscript
3. Save the completed ‘Author Disclosure Form’ as [journal acronym]­_DisclosureForm.docx – this is to ensure that the typesetter can locate the file
4. Export the ‘Author Disclosure Form’ along with the final manuscript and any other final files, to Production