A study published in PLOS One examines reproducibility from the standpoint of researchers, helping to better understand factors influencing reproducible research across diverse research communities. Conducted as part of the OSIRIS Project (Open Science to Increase Reproducibility in Science), the study explores how researchers experience reproducibility in everyday practice and how different barriers and facilitators emerge across varied research settings.
The study draws on in-depth interviews with 60 researchers across disciplines, career stages, institutions, and research contexts in the European Union and the United Kingdom. It addresses an important gap in previous research, which has often focused on specific disciplinary communities, single institutions, or particular researcher groups. By engaging with a broader and more diverse sample, the study provides insights into how challenges and enabling conditions for reproducibility may emerge differently across research environments.
While reproducibility is widely recognised as a cornerstone of credible science, researchers consistently expressed support for transparent and reproducible practices while describing environments that often prioritise speed, novelty, and publication outputs over research rigour and transparency. The findings highlight a persistent gap between principles and practice in the everyday realities of scientific work.
The study approaches reproducibility as a broader research-system issue rather than focusing on a single discipline, method, or Open Science practice, such as data sharing. Rather than identifying a checklist of separate obstacles and enablers, the findings show that reproducibility is shaped by interactions across the research ecosystem. These include governance and incentive structures, social and disciplinary cultures, resources and infrastructure, everyday research workflows, and researchers’ values, habits, and motivations.
“Reproducibility is not simply an individual responsibility,” the study emphasises. “It is a collective outcome shaped by the conditions under which research is produced.”
The findings further demonstrate that reproducibility cannot be approached through one-size-fits-all solutions. Differences across disciplines, methodologies, and specific research settings mean that the same challenge can appear in different forms depending on the context. Effective interventions, therefore, need to be context-sensitive, adaptable, and supported by appropriate resources and infrastructure.
To translate these findings into practical action, the study proposes stakeholder-specific leverage points and recommendations for institutions, funders, journals, research communities, and researchers. The recommendations aim to support a more inclusive, realistic, and sustainable approach to strengthening reproducibility within the research ecosystem.
The study also contributes to ongoing Open Science efforts by clarifying what is needed for open and transparent practices to support reproducibility in practice. Rather than treating Open Science requirements as isolated activities or compliance measures, the findings emphasise the importance of creating conditions in which transparent practices can be realistically adopted, supported, and maintained across different research contexts. In doing so, the study contributes to broader efforts to build a more transparent, equitable, and sustainable research system.
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