Journal Policies

[*AoI = “Articles of Interest” is a feature of TRN where we report abstracts of recent research related to replication and research integrity.] NOTE: The article is behind a firewall. ABSTRACT (taken from the article) “Most empirical research articles feature a single primary analysis that is conducted by the authors. However, different analysis teams usually adopt different analytical approaches and frequently reach varied conclusions.

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.

Replication studies play a crucial role in economics by ensuring the reliability, validity, and robustness of research findings. In an era where policy decisions and societal interventions heavily rely on economic research, the ability to replicate and validate research findings is important for making informed decisions and advancing knowledge. Replications in economics became more mainstream after the 2016 influential paper by Colin Camerer, Anna Dreber, and others published in Science.

[*AoI = “Articles of Interest” is a feature of TRN where we report abstracts of recent research related to replication and research integrity.] ABSTRACT (taken from the article) “This article reviews and summarizes current reproduction and replication practices in political science. We first provide definitions for reproducibility and replicability. We then review data availability policies for 28 leading political science journals and present the results from a survey of editors about their willingness to publish comments and replications.

[*AoI = “**Articles of Interest” is a feature of TRN where we report abstracts of recent research related to replication and research integrity.] ABSTRACT (taken from the article) “We assess the impact of mandating data-sharing in economics journals on two dimensions of research credibility: statistical significance and excess statistical significance (ESS).

This blog is based on the book of the same name by Norbert Hirschauer, Sven Grüner, and Oliver Mußhoff that was published in SpringerBriefs in Applied Statistics and Econometrics in August 2022. Starting from the premise that a lacking understanding of the probabilistic foundations of statistical inference is responsible for the inferential errors associated with the conventional routine of null-hypothesis-significance-testing (NHST), the book provides readers with an effective intuition and conceptual understanding of statistical inference.

Replication is important. Many journals in economics, including Energy Economics, now insist on papers being published together with a replication package, and a few journals check that package prior to publication. This is a world apart from the common practice only a decade ago. However, the step change in replicability did not lead to a step change in replication.

I am a member of the Peer Reviewers Openness (PRO) Initiative. The Pro Initiative is based on the idea that reviewers have the power to get journals to become more transparent. In particular, they encourage reviewers to request data and code from the journal when they are asked to review a manuscript.

Like many others, I was aware that there was controversy over null-hypothesis statistical testing. Nevertheless, I was shocked to learn that leading figures in the American Statistical Association (ASA) recently called for abolishing the term “statistical significance”. In an editorial in the ASA’s flagship journal, The American Statistician, Ronald Wasserstein, Allen Schirm, and Nicole Lazar write: “Based on our review of the articles in this special issue and the broader literature, we conclude that it is time to stop using the term ‘statistically significant’ entirely.

IREE ( the International Journal for Re-Views in Empirical Economics) was launched in September 2017, supported by our prestigious board of academic advisors: Sir Angus Deaton, Richard Easterlin, and Jeffrey Wooldridge. It is the first, and, to date, only journal solely dedicated to publishing replication studies in Economics. As we take stock of where we currently are, I want to take this opportunity to provide an update, and to talk about four areas that will be crucial for IREE’s growth in the future: financing, publications, submissions, and the editorial board.