The Reproducibility Initiative should feature open notebook science @figshare @scienceexchange @plos

The big news of the morning is the announcement by figshare, Science Exchange, and PLOS regarding a new study called the Reproducibility Initiative. Scientists can submit their experiments to the Initiative and their studies will be sent to capable facilities (presumably through the Science Exchange network) to reproduce the experiments. Successful reproductions will receive a validation certificate and may be published in PLOS (or other publications) and data may be hosted on figshare.

First I’d like to say congrats to all involved and it is amazing to see the open science empire expand to turn good science into great science. Reproducibility is a core ideal for science in general and it is nice to see scientists that actually hold this value true. It is also nice to provide incentive for scientists to take part in this new initiative (with publication credits and citations).

I have one suggestion though: document the reproduced experiments using open notebooks.

In my experience, open notebooks are the foundation for reproducible science and are excellent for documenting reproduced experiments. As an example see my experiments in the Repeating Crumley tag. Also what better way to validate a repeated experiment than to provide the entire account of the reproduced experiment? And by providing the full documented record of the experiment, the reproducers allow other scientists to build on the study with minimal troubleshooting. In addition, there are now several contacts available for experimental support (the original experimenters and the study validaters).

If reproducers used open notebooks this would be a huge success for open notebook science. And it would not be a huge leap to accomplish this since data will be hosted via figshare, published via PLOS, and the experiments are delegated via Science Exchange, all of which are ONS supporters. And to add to that, I’d be willing to help set it up!