Culture as a CATALYST for Achieving Lasting Reproducibility in Science

Reproducibility is a cornerstone of research quality. Reproducibility practices (RPs) enhance transparency and credibility and are a growing priority in the European Research Area (ERA). Horizon Europe and related initiatives have invested in policies, tools, infrastructures, and networks, while journals increasingly request data sharing and preregistration. Grassroots initiatives also push from below. Yet uptake of RPs by individual researchers remains limited, as many work in cultures that do not support embedding RPs in daily routines.Sustainable change requires normalising RPs and making them part of research culture. Funders, publishers, and institutions (macro level) and individual researchers (micro level) have promoted reproducibility. Departments and research teams (meso level)—the carriers of norms and behaviours—are often less familiar with reproducibility interventions. These units are pivotal because they can translate system-level policies into daily practice to amplify and sustain cultural change.CATALYST builds on this potential. It adapts proven interventions from EU projects (TIER2, OSIRIS, iRISE, TRUSTparency) and implements them in “catalysers”: departments that integrate reproducibility into daily work, tailor interventions locally, and spread them through networks.The project proceeds in two stages. First, interventions are tested and validated in 15 Catalysers across Europe in Biomedicine, Computer Science, and Social Sciences/Humanities, focusing on three levers of culture change: training, modelling, and incentives. Second, validated interventions are cascaded to 45–70 sites across Europe via mutual learning, supported by catalyser networks and multipliers such as CoARA, Reproducibility Networks, Eurodoc, Science Europe, and EUA.In parallel, CATALYST engages communities through co-creation and monitors implementation to measure culture change and RP uptake. In sum, CATALYST accelerates the ERA’s shift to open and trustworthy science.