The Science of Open (Communication) Science: Toward an Evidence-Driven Understanding of Quality Criteria in Communication Research

Abstract

Paralleling very visible debates in psychology, some parts of the communication field have recently pushed for a wholesale endorsement of the principles of open science and its practices, including a particular focus on replicability and reproducibility as quality criteria. Unfortunately, these discussions have been plagued by a set of at least 3 interrelated problems: A lack of conceptual clarity when defining open science-related challenges to communication scholarship; the irony of using intuition rather than evidence when trying to improve communication science; and our field’s surprising lack of attention to nonreplicability in social media data as one of our field’s most rapidly growing data sources. In response to these problem areas, we argue that communication as a field proceed empirically as it applies open science practices to different subfields in communication and end our essay with pathways forward for a science of open (communication) science.