In late October 2024, OSIRIS consortium member Magdalena Kozula attended the Conference on Meta-Science and Replicability in Social, Behavioral, and Cognitive Sciences (META-REP). Organized by the Priority Program META-REP funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the event brought together researchers in the heart of autumnal Munich, Bavaria, to explore replicability, reproducibility, and robustness in science. Discussions centered on how the scientific community can address challenges while fostering innovation and change in research practices.

The conference was preceded by one-day workshops tackling practical issues like FAIR data management, multiverse analysis, and replication strategies. These sessions set the stage for the main event, which began on Tuesday, October 29th, with an inspiring keynote by Fiona Fidler from the University of Melbourne. Her talk emphasized the importance of improving peer review through structured deliberation protocols and replicability forecasting based on the experience from the repliCATS project (Collaborative Assessments for Trustworthy Science). On Wednesday, Daniel Lakens (Eindhoven University of Technology) delivered the second keynote, “Which research is worth doing well?”, reflecting on why psychology has struggled to resolve its many crises – including issues with replication – and proposed ways forward for the field, such as strengthening coordination in science or improving working conditions.

META-REP provided an excellent platform to showcase progress and preliminary results from two OSIRIS research projects under Work Package 2 (WP2): a scoping review of Open Science interventions aimed at improving reproducibility and a qualitative study exploring how researchers conceptualize and approach reproducibility alongside the barriers and facilitators they encounter.

Magdalena Kozula presented these findings during the “Replication & Reproduction Activities” session on the first day, which also included a presentation by Rachel Heyard on OSIRIS’s sister project, iRISE. In her talk, Magdalena introduced insights from both WP2 initiatives. She detailed the process and outcomes of the OSIRIS-TIER2 teams’ scoping review, which maps the evidence and gaps in reproducibility interventions. She complimented these insights by featuring initial findings from interviews with 60 European researchers, revealing diverse perspectives on reproducibility and the factors influencing it. The presentation sparked lively discussions, both in the sessions and during informal exchanges, on topics such as interventions in the academic environment, the roles of various stakeholders, and Open Science practices.

The conference showcased a wealth of exceptional European projects, presented in 20 sessions and a poster event. These initiatives spanned theory studies, methodological innovations, meta-science research, and replication efforts, all contributing to a deeper understanding of reproducibility. Events like META-REP demonstrate how academia is rising to the challenge of improving reproducibility and reshaping the scientific landscape for the better.

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