ReproducibiliTea KU Leuven: Challenges and solutions to increasing engagement in an open science journal club
ReproducibiliTea Leuven, part of a global movement for open science, hosts bi-semester journal clubs promoting transparency and reproducibility. This poster describes challenges in engagement, strategies to broaden participation across the sciences, and future thematic planning.
by Joanne R. Beames, Benjamin Kunc, Eline Van Geert, Naeem Muhammad, Aline Claesen, and Olivia Kirtley
Published onMay 06, 2024
ReproducibiliTea KU Leuven: Challenges and solutions to increasing engagement in an open science journal club
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Abstract
ReproducibiliTea Leuven is an initiative led by early career researchers that aims to promote open science practices across research fields. It is part of a global movement that originated at the University of Oxford in 2018 and has expanded to 99 institutions in 24 countries. ReproducibiliTea Leuven, established in 2020, conducts approximately two journal clubs per semester that involve deep dive discussions and friendly debates on articles or media related to open science practices. In previous years, sessions have focused on open science awareness and solutions to enhance transparency, reproducibility, and replicability. Various challenges in implementation have hampered sign-up rates, active engagement, and retention over time. These challenges are not unique to Leuven but have also been anecdotally reported by organizers of other groups across Europe, USA, and Canada.
This year, the organizing committee is committed to addressing these challenges to expand the reach and impact of ReproducibiliTea Leuven. Our specific focus is on broadening participation beyond psychology researchers. In the next coming months, we will implement a variety of strategies including needs assessment surveys, strategic collaborations with other ReproducibiliTea organizations worldwide (e.g., York University, Toronto, Canada), and diverse advertising methods such as posters, interdepartmental listservs, shout-outs at relevant open science events, and tapping into the supporter base of other methodological groups. We aim to tackle cross-cutting themes of relevance to other fields such as computer science, data analytics, social science, ecology, and biology. Guided by this objective, our journal club discussions will delve into topics like open science practices in multidisciplinary teams and "big data" projects. This poster seeks to convey ReproducibiliTea’s vision, strategic goals, and thematic plan for the next 1-2 years (informed by our needs assessment survey), as well as highlight our efforts to extend our reach to a wider audience of multidisciplinary researchers.
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