[Excerpts taken from the editorial, “Replications do not fail” published by Nature Human Behaviour]

“For a very long time, replication studies had a lowly status in the hierarchy of publishable research. The equation of scientific advance with novelty and discovery relegated replication studies to second-class status in the scientific world. Over the past few years, this has fortunately been fast changing.”

“Since the launch of this journal, we have wanted to redefine what constitutes a significant scientific advance (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-016-0033). Science moves forward not only through discovery, but also through confirmation or disconfirmation of existing findings that have shaped a field. We placed replication studies on the same level as studies that report new findings and adopted the following principle: if the original study was highly influential, then a study that replicates its methodology is of equal value.”

“Still, replication studies have been hard to find in our pages—they constitute a very small proportion of the submissions we receive. Nonetheless, the current issue, by design, features four replication studies, all of high value in terms of their contribution to the scientific record.”

“This issue is a celebration of replication, and we hope that, by featuring these contributions together and writing this editorial, other scientists will also be inspired to devote their efforts in replication projects and more funders will be inclined to prioritize the funding of replication research. We are certainly looking forward to receiving and publishing many more replications in our pages.”

To read the full editorial, click here.