2026-05-06 –, Track 1
The TOP Guidelines can be used by journals to indicate their level of commitment to various Open Science practices. Last year, they were updated to increase their applicability to other disciplines beyond psychology. This update, however, brings a key change to the highest level of the guidelines (i.e., the highest standard). While previously requiring concrete, verifiable actions, it now largely relies on adherence to “best practices”. Since these are not clearly defined or established across or even within disciplines like psychology, this shift compromises the implementation of the guidelines.
To address this problem, the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) and Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT) aim to develop community-driven, consensus-based best practice guidelines for psychology. In this hackathon, we will collectively prepare a guideline draft for the practice of preregistration, as the basis for the planned consensus discussions. All help is greatly appreciated!
Katarina Blask (ZPID), Flavio Azevedo (FORRT)
Please classify your session as the theme it fits best in:: Incentives/Culture - Content related to the incentive structure of science, culture, and norms of science What is your end product?:In this hackathon, we will prepare and consolidate existing materials to serve as the starting point for the consensus guideline for preregistration. To this end, we will collaboratively collect materials (such as previous recommendations, guides, and templates) and start drafting individual parts of the guideline. Thus, the end product of the hackathon will be a collection of previously developed resources, and (if time allows) a first draft of individual parts of the preregistration guideline.
How will the session's content foster diversity & inclusion (e.g., who will present, who will it serve), and how will it improve psychological science?:Everyone is welcome to this hackathon. Ideally, a diverse mix of people with different experiences and backgrounds will participate. We aim to develop the best practice guidelines as a community project, that is, with and for the community. Thus, including the community as much as possible is one of the most important aspects of this project.
With the proposed guidelines, we hope to improve psychological science in multiple ways:
1) We aim to develop best practice guidelines that are widely accepted by both the psychological research community, journals, funders, psychological societies, and other stakeholders.
2) We want to provide a strong signal that the involved stakeholders encourage these best practices, and therefore foster open science
3) We will publish the guidelines with an open license (CC-BY), making it possible that they can be revised and adapted, so that they can a) evolve alongside the changing circumstances in the psychological research landscape, and b) be used as the basis for best practice guidelines in other disciplines
No specific experience/knowledge is required.
Meta-science & infrastructure, focused on preregistration.