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:
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.
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:
If after discussion with your Portfolio Manager, you decide to implement Open Science Badges on your journal, the following changes will be made:
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.
Once a paper has been submitted to a journal supporting Open Science Badges, authors will go through the following steps:
Authors can find out more about Open Science Badges on Author Services.
When an editor or editorial office receives an application from an author, they will follow this process: