Quality AssuranceOngoing
TIER2
Enhancing Trust, Integrity and Efficiency in Research through next-level Reproducibility
Background & Rationale
Lack of reproducibility of research results has become a major theme in recent years. As the world emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, economic pressures (among others, increasing scrutiny of research funding) and exposed consequences of lack of societal trust in science make addressing reproducibility of urgent importance. Addressing reproducibility might reduce inefficiencies, avoid repetition, maximise return on investment, prevent mistakes, and speed innovation to bring trust, integrity and efficiency to the global research and innovation system in general.
The European Research Area (ERA) is an ambitious effort to create a single, borderless market for research, innovation and technology across the EU. Enabling increased reproducibility of research results directly contributes to, and builds upon the ERA aims.
Thus, the project TIER2 is a new project funded by the European Commission under their Horizon Europe programme, within the call Increasing the reproducibility of scientific results (HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ERA-01-41), running from January 2023 until December 2025.
Objectives
The overall goal of TIER2 is to boost knowledge on reproducibility, create tools, engage communities, implement interventions and policy across different contexts, in order to increase re-use and overall quality of research results. Concretely, we want:
- To conceptualize: to create the conceptual & evidential framework for the project
- To design: to co-create interventions for improved reproducibility across contexts
- To implement: to drive change through community-driven stakeholder development & piloting of new interventions & tools for reproducibility
- To assess: to synthesize findings from across the project using impact pathway logics & econometric analysis to validate the framework
- To recommend/reflect: to co-create a cohesive roadmap for future developments and
- To network/empower: to equip researchers, funders, publishers & others with the skills, connections & resources to exploit state-of-the-art guidance, tools & services
Methodology
TIER2 will address reproducibility by selecting 3 broad research areas: social, life and computer sciences, and 2 cross-disciplinary stakeholder groups: research publishers and funders, to systematically investigate reproducibility across contexts, including:
- Thoroughly examinating the epistemological, social and technical factors which shape the meanings and implications of reproducibility across contexts
- Building a state-of-the-art evidence-base on existing reproducibility interventions, tools and practices, identifying key knowledge gaps
- Using of co-creation techniques of scenario-planning, backcasting and user-centred design to select, prioritize, design/adapt and implement new tools/practices to enhance reproducibility across contexts
- Aligning of activities to ensure that tools are EOSC-interoperable (European Open Science Cloud)
- Enabling capacity-building actions with communities (i.e., Reproducibility Networks) to facilitate awareness, skills and community-uptake
- Synthesizing knowledge on reproducibility gains and savings through systematic assessment of the efficacy of interventions across contexts
- Co-creating with stakeholders a final roadmap for future reproducibility, including policy recommendations
Expected results & Perspectives
TIER2 will significantly boost knowledge on reproducibility, create tools, engage communities, implement interventions and policy across different contexts, to increase re-use and overall quality of research results in the European Research Area and beyond, and consequently, increase trust, integrity and efficiency in research through next-level reproducibility tools, practices & policies across diverse epistemic contexts.
Further informationen
Funded by the European Union
TIER2 receives funding from the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
Grant agreement No 101094817.
Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the EU nor the EC can be held responsible for them.
