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Can We Do Better? Replication and Online Appendices in Political Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2020

Jonathan Grossman Open the ORCID record for Jonathan Grossman [Opens in a new window]  and
Ami Pedahzur Open the ORCID record for Ami Pedahzur [Opens in a new window]
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Abstract

Replicability in political science is on the rise, as disciplinary journals have been placing a growing emphasis on data access and research transparency (DA–RT) practices and policies. As a result, nearly every article that is published today in leading political science journals offers an online appendix that includes data, code, and methodological explanations necessary for replication. While these developments are laudable, many appendices still do not enable satisfactory replication because they are inaccessible, compartmentalized, and difficult to understand. In this article and in its accompanying online appendix, we demonstrate this problem and make the case for more accessible and comprehensive appendices whose contribution can fulfill and go beyond mere replicability. We propose several ways in which authors and journals can produce better appendices, namely, by making appendices more intuitive, integrated, and standardized, and by choosing an adequate online platform on which to create and host the appendix.

Type
Reflection
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 906 - 911
Copyright
© American Political Science Association 2020

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the authors precedes the References section.

*

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VXZZ0J

The research for this paper was supported by the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Leonard Davis Institute Research Seminar in January 2020. We thank the participants of the seminar for their constructive comments. We are especially indebted to Yoram Haftel and Raelene Camille Wyse for their excellent suggestions.

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Supplementary material: PDF

Grossman and Pedahzur Supplementary Materials

Grossman and Pedahzur Supplementary Materials

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Grossman and Pedahzur Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VXZZ0J
Link