RÖSELER: Replication Research Symposium and Journal

Efforts to teach, collect, curate, and guide replication research are culminating in the new diamond open access journal Replication Research, which will launch in late 2025. The Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT; forrt.org) and the Münster Center for Open Science have spearheaded several initiatives to bolster replication research across various disciplines. From May 14-16, 2025, we are excited to invite researchers to join us in Münster, as well as online, for the Replication Research Symposium. This event will mark a significant step toward the launch of our interdisciplinary journal dedicated to reproductions, replications, and discussions on the methodologies involved. But let’s start from the beginning: What is going on at FORRT?

Finding and exploring replications: FORRT Replication Database (FReD) includes hundreds of replication studies and thousands of replication findings – which we define as tests of previously established claims using different data. Researchers can use the Annotator to have their reference lists auto-checked to see whether they cited original studies that have been replicated. With the Explorer, they get an overview of all studies and can analyze replication rates across different success criteria or moderator variables.

Meta-analyzing replication outcomes: To increase the accessibility of the database, we created the FReD R-package with which researchers can run their own analyses or run the ShinyApps locally. In a vignette, we outline different replication success criteria and show how this choice can affect the overall replication success rate.

Teaching replications: One of FORRT’s core ideas is to support researchers from all fields to learn about openness and reproducibility. Among numerous projects, we clarified terminology ( Glossary of Open Science Terms), produced educational materials such as an educationally-driven review paper on the transformative impact of the replication crisis, syllabus and slides with lecture and pedagogical notes (see Educational toolkit), and curated resources. We are also now working together with experts from economics, psychology, medicine, and other fields to create an interdisciplinary guide to carrying out replications and reproductions.

Publishing replication studies and discussing standards across fields: We are currently developing the journal Replication Research, a diamond open-access outlet for replication and reproduction studies and discussions about the respective methods. There will be reproducibility checks for all published studies and standardized machine-readable templates that authors are encouraged to use. We are currently building the journal with a network of 20 experts from different fields. From February until April, we are organizing the Road to Replication Research via Zoom. This online discussion series is centered around different aspects of open and responsible scientific publishing and is open to anybody who wants to join the conversation, so that the journal is maximally open from the start. Finally, at the Replication Research Symposium, participants and experts from diverse fields such as psychology, economics, biology, medicine, marketing, meta-science, library science, humanities, and others will convene to discuss the significance and methodology of conducting replication and reproduction studies over three days in May 2025. This symposium will further shape Replication Research and we invite researchers from all fields to present their replications, reproductions, or methodological discussions. The journal launch is then slated for late 2025.

For more information about Replication Research, the upcoming symposium, and the online discussion series about the creation of the journal click here.

Lukas Röseler is the managing director of the Münster Center for Open Science at the University of Münster, one of the project leads at FORRT’s Replication Hub, and will be the managing editor of Replication Research. He can be contacted at lukas.roeseler@uni-muenster.de.

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