Open Practice Badges

What are Open Practice Badges?

Open Practice Badges are incentives for researchers to share data, materials, or to preregister their work. They are designed to be displayed on published articles to show that authors have engaged in these open practices.

Where do they come from?

The badges are an initiative of the Center for Open Science (CoS), a non-profit organisation with a mission to increase the openness, integrity and reproducibility of scientific research.

Why do we use them?

Cambridge University Press is committed to supporting Open Research, and open practices in research. Implementing Open Practice Badges has been shown to dramatically increase the rate of data sharing among researchers, which is one of our goals in our commitment to transparency and openness for journals.

What are the badges?

There are currently three Open Practice Badges:

The Open Data Badge indicates that data necessary to reproduce the reported results is available in an open-access repository, under an open licence, with an accompanying description of the data.
The Open Materials Badge indicates that any digitally-shareable components of the research methodology are available in an open-access repository, and that any components that cannot be shared digitally are described in sufficient detail for an independent researcher to understand how to reproduce the procedure.
The Pre-registration Badge indicates that the study design was publicly registered and time-stamped before the research took place, in a system such as the Open Science Framework or As Predicted.

Full details of the criteria for each badge can be found at the Open Science Framework.

How have we implemented them?

Our work on Open Practice Badges is driven by the needs of our communities, and we have been working closely with journal editorial teams to implement them where they are most appropriate. Some journals have implemented all three badges, while others have implemented just the badges most relevant to their research communities.

If a journal has implemented badges, authors will be asked during manuscript submission to indicate whether their manuscript has met the criteria for any available badges. More detailed information about a specific journal’s process for awarding badges, and assessing whether a manuscript has met the criteria for badges, can be found in the relevant journal’s author information pages.

What does an article with badges look like?

When the article is published, badges will be displayed both in the article and in the journal’s table of contents, helping readers to identify articles following best practices in research transparency. The article itself will also include an explanation of where data, materials, or a pre-registered study design can be found, as appropriate. This information will usually be available in a Data Availability Statement.

Which journals have implemented them?

Journals that publish badges include:

Several other journals are working towards implementation – please contact us if you would like to see Open Practice Badges on your work!