Publishing research with undergraduate students via replication work: The collaborative replications and education project

Abstract

The Collaborative Replications and Education Project (CREP; http://osf.io/wfc6u) is a framework for undergraduate students to participate in the production of high-quality direct replications. Staffed by volunteers (including the seven authors 1 of this paper) and incorporated into coursework, CREP helps produce high-quality data using existing resources and provides structure for research projects from conceptualization to dissemination. Most notably, student research generated through CREP make an impact: data from these projects are available for meta-analyses, some of which are published with student authors. The call for direct replications of published psychological research has been pronounced and sustained in recent years (e.g., Lindsay, 2015), yet accomplishing this in light of the current incentive structure for faculty is challenging (Nosek et al., 2012). There is pressure for faculty to publish original research in high-impact journals and report significant effects (Franco et al., 2014), and so replication work often does not get the attention that it requires or deserves (Martin and Clarke, 2017). CREP harnesses the potential of student research to answer this call.