Opening open science to all: Demystifying reproducibility and transparency practices in linguistic research

Abstract

In recent years, numerous fields of research have seen a push for increased reproducibility and transparency practices. As a result, specific transparency practices have emerged, such as open access publishing, preregistration, sharing data, analyses, and code, performing study replications, and declaring positionality and conflicts of interest. While many agree that open science practices represent a positive step forward in improving scientific rigor, these practices, by and large, have not been adopted in the field of linguistics (Bochynska et al., 2023). Few, if any, researchers have had explicit instruction on the practices of open science as part of their professional training. Nonetheless, today’s speech researcher is expected to be up to date on the current protocols of open science in order incorporate the methodological practices aimed at improving reproducibility/replicability. The present work intends to help make open science practices understandable and accessible to researchers in linguistics from all backgrounds and at every stage, from students/ERCs to senior researchers and advisors. We outline eight specific open science practices that linguists can adopt to make their research more open, transparent, inclusive, and accessible to a wider audience.