Replication studies rarely change how scientists view the original research they test. This project aims to fix that. The problem is straightforward but stubborn: researchers often ignore or fail to cite replication results, even when those results cast doubt on widely accepted findings. This wastes time, money, and effort across the social, cognitive, and behavioural sciences. The team will first identify the psychological, social, and systemic barriers that prevent researchers from finding and using replications. They will then build practical tools—including a browser plugin that flags relevant replications when someone reads an original article, and a bot that scans preprint reference lists to alert authors to pertinent replication studies—and test whether these tools change citation behaviour. If successful, the project could reduce research waste by making replication results visible and actionable at the moment researchers encounter original claims. Journals, funders, and policymakers could adopt these tools to shift how research is evaluated and built upon. The work is applied rather than fundamental science, but it addresses a systemic failure that undermines the reliability of published findings across multiple disciplines.
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Replication studies are essential to assess which scientific findings can be built on, and which require revision. While still rare, they are increasingly conducted and published, even if often, they do not notably affect the perception of the original research. This project seeks to enhance the adoption and influence of replication results. Firstly, we will identify the barriers and success factors that explain replications’ (lack of) impact. On that basis, we will develop and evaluate tools designed to overcome these challenges. Our work leverages the largest database of replications in the social, cognitive, and behavioural sciences, which we have developed. Research findings across many domains show low replicability, which hampers cumulative science and leads to research waste. Increasing the visibility and impact of replication results is crucial to improving R&D practices. To achieve this, we need to address three key challenges: Recent claims suggest that, on average, replications fail to achieve substantial impact. Therefore, we need to look beyond average results and identify the conditions under which individual replications become influential. This will help us pinpoint the overall success factors and moderators. Researchers often fail to cite and use replications, and the reasons for this remain unclear. Therefore, we need to identify barriers that prevent researchers from finding and using replications to inform and communicate their practice, so that we can develop meaningful interventions. After identifying success factors and barriers related to uptake of replications, we need to develop tools that highlight pertinent replications proactively, and evaluate these tools to assess user reactions and impact. This effort will help build an ecosystem where replications are easily found and effectively used, complementing existing knowledge dissemination platforms. Through this project, we will understand psychological and behavioural barriers that prevent researchers from using published replications. We will also develop tools that help overcome these barriers. We will conduct bibliometric research to identify replications that have significantly influenced the reception of original research and determine the success factors behind these shifts. We will conduct mixed-method research (semi-structured interviews followed by a survey) to identify what barriers (personal, social, and systemic) researchers face when searching, finding and using replications to inform and communicate their practice. We will develop tools that proactively highlight pertinent replications to researchers and research users, enabling them to base their work on robust evidence. These tools will include a Chromium browser plugin that highlights relevant replications when original articles are viewed and a bot that scans reference lists of OSF preprints (and related platforms) to notify authors of pertinent replications, among others. We will evaluate these interventions by assessing user reactions and impact on citation practices, to ensure that they respond to user needs and enhance the impact of replications. Together, these investigations and interventions will advance our understanding of how replications can be more visible and impactful, thereby reducing research waste. Additionally, this project will create specific tools that journals, funders, and policymakers can adopt to change the way research is conducted.
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