Reproducibility for Everyone: a Community-Led Initiative with Global Reach in Reproducible Research Training

Reproducibility is a cornerstone of the scientific method and sets apart science from pseudoscience. Unfortunately, a majority of scientists have experienced difficulties in reproducing their own or someone else’s results. This inability to confirm scientific findings negatively impacts individual scientists, funding bodies, academic journals, pharmaceutical drug development and the public’s perception of science. Factors causing irreproducible results can arise from nearly every aspect of the scientific process, and typically reflect a lack of in-depth training in reproducible research practices. Here, we present the Reproducibility for Everyone (R4E) initiative, a collaboration between researchers from diverse scientific disciplines and industry partners who aspire to promote open and reproducible research practices. We have developed a customizable workshop series targeting researchers at all levels and across disciplines. Our workshop series covers the conceptual framework of reproducible research practices followed by an overview of actionable research practices. To date, we have reached more than 2000 researchers through over 25 workshops held at international conferences and local meetings. By incorporating further contributions from the scientific community, we hope to expand this valuable resource for teaching transparent and reproducible research practices. Our initiative demonstrates how a shared set of materials may form the basis for a global initiative to improve reproducibility in science. The workshop materials, including accompanying resources, are available under a CC-BY 4.0 license at www.repro4everyone.org.