Prevalence of Transparent Research Practices in Psychology: A Cross-Sectional Study of Empirical Articles Published in 2022

Abstract

More than a decade of advocacy and policy reforms have attempted to increase the uptake of transparent research practices in the field of psychology; however, their collective impact is unclear. We estimated the prevalence of transparent research practices in (a) all psychology journals (i.e., field-wide), and (b) prominent psychology journals, by manually examining two random samples of 200 empirical articles (N = 400) published in 2022. Most articles had an open-access version (field-wide: 74%, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [67%, 79%]; prominent: 71% [64%, 77%]) and included a funding statement (field-wide: 76% [70%, 82%]; prominent: 76% [70%, 82%]) or conflict-of-interest statement (field-wide: 76% [70%, 82%]; prominent: 73% [67%, 79%]). Relatively few articles had a preregistration (field-wide: 7% [2.5%, 12%]; prominent: 14% [8.5%, 19%]), materials (field-wide: 16% [9%, 24%]; prominent: 19% [12%, 27%]), raw/primary data (field-wide: 14% [7%, 21%]; prominent: 16% [9.5%, 24%]), or analysis scripts (field-wide: 8.5% [4.5%, 13%]; prominent: 14% [9.5%, 19%]) that were immediately accessible without contacting authors or third parties. In conjunction with prior research, our results suggest transparency increased moderately from 2017 to 2022. Overall, despite considerable infrastructure improvements, bottom-up advocacy, and top-down policy initiatives, research transparency continues to be widely neglected in psychology.