[From the blog “Psychology’s New Normal” by Stephen Lindsay, posted at the Center for Open Science’s website]

“As one means of encouraging these transparent science practices, the Center for Open Science developed the idea of awarding badges to articles that met certain criteria.  The data badge is awarded if the data needed to reproduce the analyses reported in the article can be directly accessed from a permanent, third-party site by other researchers.  The materials badge is awarded if the materials needed to reproduce the procedure can be directly accessed.  And the preregistration badge is awarded if the researchers show that they had a detailed plan for how they would conduct and analyze the study before they looked at the data.”

“Eric Eich, my predecessor as Editor in Chief of Psychological Science, made the journal the launch vehicle for such badges, beginning in 2014.  Uptake was gradual but steady, and may have been assisted by a report by Kidwell et al. (2016) with evidence that the badges were making a real difference to the likelihood that other researchers could access the data associated with a paper.”

“…This month, July of 2018, the Table of Contents for Psychological Science  is like a billboard announcing the new normal.  As you can see, 13 of the 15 “regular” articles received the data badge (nine also received the materials badge and we had three of the once-rare triple-badgers).  We’re not done yet.  The quality of the preregistrations that earn badges is still very mixed and we cannot guarantee that other researchers will be able to reproduce the analyses of articles that earn the data badge.  But we are moving in the right direction.  And it is very exciting to hear that other societies and other journals are also taking up badges as a way of making transparency normative.”

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